On the beach

There is an unusually large number of beach scenes in the work of mid-20th century Lithuanian artists, who were not especially focused on the leisure time of town dwellers. At the turn of the 1920s and the 1930s, Kajetonas Sklėrius painted sunbathers on the beach at Palanga. Subsequently, Vytautas Kairiūkštis enthusiastically painted nudes against the background of the sea. This picture by Petras Kiaulėnas (1909–1955) is a slightly mundane version of bathers. The artist painted two urban dwellers wearing rather closed-style bikinis (as were worn in the West, where Kiaulėnas was living; they reached Lithuania about a decade later) engaged in conversation. The picture may be described as genre art, or as a study of the naked body, but in fact on seeing it one feels a longing for summer, the sea and holidays with all their pleasures. The longing is aroused by the view and its mood, as well as by the beauty of the women and the painting itself. 

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album MORE THAN JUST BEAUTY (2012). Compiler and author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė
Expositions: “More Than Just Beauty: The Image of Woman in the LAWIN collection”, 12 October – 11 November 2012, National Gallery of Art, Vilnius

There is an unusually large number of beach scenes in the work of mid-20th century Lithuanian artists, who were not especially focused on the leisure time of town dwellers. At the turn of the 1920s and the 1930s, Kajetonas Sklėrius painted sunbathers on the beach at Palanga. Subsequently, Vytautas Kairiūkštis enthusiastically painted nudes against the background of the sea. This picture by Petras Kiaulėnas (1909–1955) is a slightly mundane version of bathers. The artist painted two urban dwellers wearing rather closed-style bikinis (as were worn in the West, where Kiaulėnas was living; they reached Lithuania about a decade later) engaged in conversation. The picture may be described as genre art, or as a study of the naked body, but in fact on seeing it one feels a longing for summer, the sea and holidays with all their pleasures. The longing is aroused by the view and its mood, as well as by the beauty of the women and the painting itself. 

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album MORE THAN JUST BEAUTY (2012). Compiler and author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė
Expositions: “More Than Just Beauty: The Image of Woman in the LAWIN collection”, 12 October – 11 November 2012, National Gallery of Art, Vilnius