Potato picking

This print by Vytautas Kazimieras Jonynas (1907–1997) portraying potato pickers is an attempt by the artist, who was taking the first steps of his career, to respond to the government’s order to produce socially topical art. Jonynas made this print while he was studying in Paris, although he must have brought the preliminary drawings from Lithuania, maybe from near his native village of Ūdrija. Like other artists at the time, he was fascinated by the modern city life in interwar Paris. On the other hand, the French were concerned as much as the Lithuanians were about the expression of their national identity through art, so that students who attended schools in the capital of modernism spent many hours drawing, painting and modelling fishermen, fruit pickers, haymakers and other rural workers. For the French, a flourishing agricultural sector was not only the history of their country, but a guarantee of its future as well, and therefore both local and foreign art students were taught to portray this important theme. The trend was completely in line with the expectations of Lithuania’s Ministry of Education, which financed the studies of young artists abroad.

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

This print by Vytautas Kazimieras Jonynas (1907–1997) portraying potato pickers is an attempt by the artist, who was taking the first steps of his career, to respond to the government’s order to produce socially topical art. Jonynas made this print while he was studying in Paris, although he must have brought the preliminary drawings from Lithuania, maybe from near his native village of Ūdrija. Like other artists at the time, he was fascinated by the modern city life in interwar Paris. On the other hand, the French were concerned as much as the Lithuanians were about the expression of their national identity through art, so that students who attended schools in the capital of modernism spent many hours drawing, painting and modelling fishermen, fruit pickers, haymakers and other rural workers. For the French, a flourishing agricultural sector was not only the history of their country, but a guarantee of its future as well, and therefore both local and foreign art students were taught to portray this important theme. The trend was completely in line with the expectations of Lithuania’s Ministry of Education, which financed the studies of young artists abroad.

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