Robertėlis in the Countryside

Whatever genre this picture is has to be determined by what the viewer is looking for. It could be a portrait against the background of a landscape, or a landscape with a figure of a child, or a landscape with some objects. In the last case, the objects are coloured balls, scattered by some mysterious force, and now lying motionless in a meadow. They are cheerful, like rubber balls or sugared almonds, but at the same time they are strange and sinister, because of their unexplained quantity, immobility, and their regular and hard shape, which clashes with the soft greenery of the vegetation. The artist liked the contrast between naturalistic details and states produced by the imagination, and must have sought this ambivalence. In this picture from his early period, Stasys Eidrigevičius (b. 1949) painted his nephew Robertėlis. Commenting on the work, he recalled: ‘I often took photographs at that time. This work was based on a photograph. The house seen behind the bushes was my parents’ house. It no longer exists. It survives only in the photograph.’

Text author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album THE WORLD OF LANDSCAPES II (2013). Compiler and author Nijolė Tumėnienė, OBJECTS ON SHOW (2017). Compiler and author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė
Expositions: "Free and Unfree. Lithuanian Art between 1945 and 1990", 9 September 2021 – 30 April 2022, Lithuanian Art Centre TARTLE (Užupio St. 40, Vilnius). Curators Dovilė Barcytė and Ieva Burbaitė. "Green", 6 June – 31 December 2023, M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art. Curators Giedrė Jankevičiūtė and Daina Kamarauskienė.
© LATGA, Vilnius 2024

Whatever genre this picture is has to be determined by what the viewer is looking for. It could be a portrait against the background of a landscape, or a landscape with a figure of a child, or a landscape with some objects. In the last case, the objects are coloured balls, scattered by some mysterious force, and now lying motionless in a meadow. They are cheerful, like rubber balls or sugared almonds, but at the same time they are strange and sinister, because of their unexplained quantity, immobility, and their regular and hard shape, which clashes with the soft greenery of the vegetation. The artist liked the contrast between naturalistic details and states produced by the imagination, and must have sought this ambivalence. In this picture from his early period, Stasys Eidrigevičius (b. 1949) painted his nephew Robertėlis. Commenting on the work, he recalled: ‘I often took photographs at that time. This work was based on a photograph. The house seen behind the bushes was my parents’ house. It no longer exists. It survives only in the photograph.’

Text author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album THE WORLD OF LANDSCAPES II (2013). Compiler and author Nijolė Tumėnienė, OBJECTS ON SHOW (2017). Compiler and author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė
Expositions: "Free and Unfree. Lithuanian Art between 1945 and 1990", 9 September 2021 – 30 April 2022, Lithuanian Art Centre TARTLE (Užupio St. 40, Vilnius). Curators Dovilė Barcytė and Ieva Burbaitė. "Green", 6 June – 31 December 2023, M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art. Curators Giedrė Jankevičiūtė and Daina Kamarauskienė.
© LATGA, Vilnius 2024