Flowers in a white vase

While painting this picture, Stasys Ušinskas (1905–1974) was more concerned about how than what to portray. The subject of this still-life is particularly ordinary: a bunch of dahlias, asters and bending-over lilies in a white faceted vase standing on the corner of a table, against a background of bluish drapery descending in hard folds. The artist, who was living in Paris at the time, was not content with the usual painting materials: he decided to use a new method to improve the texture, and covered plain areas with coarse sand, thus achieving a flickering effect. In this way, he enriched the objects with even more materiality. It is an excellent example of the modification of a genre tradition which had turned into a visual stereotype! Ušinskas’ ability to match tradition with innovative aspiration fascinated the young physician Vytautas Girdzijauskas, who acquired the picture and owned it all his life. A photograph taken by Gintautas Trimakas and reproduced in the foreword of the catalogue of an exhibition of Art Deco in Lithuania at the M.K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum (Art deco Lietuvoje, compiler G. Jankevičiūtė, Kaunas, 1998) shows what the picture looked like in Girdzijauskas’ home, which was furnished with Art Deco furniture, in the Mokslininkų (Scientists’) house (on Washington Square) in Vilnius. Unfortunately, the picture could not be displayed in the exhibition, for it had left its owner’s house in 1998, and began wandering from one collection to another, ending up in the Ellex Valiunas collection.

Text author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album OBJECTS ON SHOW (2017). Compiler and author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė

While painting this picture, Stasys Ušinskas (1905–1974) was more concerned about how than what to portray. The subject of this still-life is particularly ordinary: a bunch of dahlias, asters and bending-over lilies in a white faceted vase standing on the corner of a table, against a background of bluish drapery descending in hard folds. The artist, who was living in Paris at the time, was not content with the usual painting materials: he decided to use a new method to improve the texture, and covered plain areas with coarse sand, thus achieving a flickering effect. In this way, he enriched the objects with even more materiality. It is an excellent example of the modification of a genre tradition which had turned into a visual stereotype! Ušinskas’ ability to match tradition with innovative aspiration fascinated the young physician Vytautas Girdzijauskas, who acquired the picture and owned it all his life. A photograph taken by Gintautas Trimakas and reproduced in the foreword of the catalogue of an exhibition of Art Deco in Lithuania at the M.K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum (Art deco Lietuvoje, compiler G. Jankevičiūtė, Kaunas, 1998) shows what the picture looked like in Girdzijauskas’ home, which was furnished with Art Deco furniture, in the Mokslininkų (Scientists’) house (on Washington Square) in Vilnius. Unfortunately, the picture could not be displayed in the exhibition, for it had left its owner’s house in 1998, and began wandering from one collection to another, ending up in the Ellex Valiunas collection.

Text author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album OBJECTS ON SHOW (2017). Compiler and author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė