Series ‘Old Vilnius’, 1942–1948.
In the Soviet period, Kuzminskis had an extraordinary career as an artist. He became a People’s Artist of the USSR, a member of the USSR Academy of Arts, and a long-standing head of the Artists’ Union of the LSSR. After the war, he continued to make prints of views of the Old Town in Vilnius, but in a different style: the prints are fragmented, with finely cut shapes, but darker and more sombre. He engraved some of his prints on a material that was commonly used after the war, artificial leather called kozhimit (in Russian кожимит). Some of his engravings reflect the fearsome Soviet reality: the Old Town with soldiers marching through it, the entrance to Vilnius University embellished with flags and a portrait of Stalin. The titles of the works show the ideological changes too: Skapo St was renamed after the composer Juozas Tallat-Kelpša, and the governor’s palace was transformed into the Officers’ House, a place for entertainment for the Red Army. This was how the Old Town acquired its Soviet spirit.
Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album
VILNIUS. TOPOPHILIA II (2015). Compiler and author Laima Laučkaitė
