Flowers

Painted during the Second World War, this picture is splendid, beautiful and elegant, although it shows the miserable reality. Vytautas Kairiūkštis (1890–1961) invites viewers to enjoy the beauty of nature and art, and unobtrusively reminds us that tomorrow not only may these beautifully painted flowers wither, but maybe the very picture, the artist and the viewers will no longer exist, for peace and life are so fragile during war. Naturally, we will only understand this when we stop to think about the circumstances under which the picture was painted. By painting a white jug with a bunch of wild or garden flowers, the artist must have been looking for consolation and strength. After his death, several variations on this motif found their way into the Lithuanian Art Museum, together with other works by him, while this one moved from one private collection to another, until it was acquired by Ellex Valiunas, and became a centrepiece of the collection.

Text author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album OBJECTS ON SHOW (2017). Compiler and author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė
Expositions: “Académie de Vilna. Vilnius Drawing School (1866–1915)”, 5 October – 26 November 2017, National Gallery of Art, Vilnius (curator Jolanta Širkaitė)

Painted during the Second World War, this picture is splendid, beautiful and elegant, although it shows the miserable reality. Vytautas Kairiūkštis (1890–1961) invites viewers to enjoy the beauty of nature and art, and unobtrusively reminds us that tomorrow not only may these beautifully painted flowers wither, but maybe the very picture, the artist and the viewers will no longer exist, for peace and life are so fragile during war. Naturally, we will only understand this when we stop to think about the circumstances under which the picture was painted. By painting a white jug with a bunch of wild or garden flowers, the artist must have been looking for consolation and strength. After his death, several variations on this motif found their way into the Lithuanian Art Museum, together with other works by him, while this one moved from one private collection to another, until it was acquired by Ellex Valiunas, and became a centrepiece of the collection.

Text author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album OBJECTS ON SHOW (2017). Compiler and author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė
Expositions: “Académie de Vilna. Vilnius Drawing School (1866–1915)”, 5 October – 26 November 2017, National Gallery of Art, Vilnius (curator Jolanta Širkaitė)