A couple in the street

Twentieth-century artists liked to depict the picturesque Skapo Street, but it was usually empty or just had one or two unimportant figures on it. Jonas Švažas (1925–1976) broke the tradition, and turned the street into a stage, on which relations between two people develop. A man and a woman face each other, squeezed between the blank stonework of the Old Town. The anxious assonance of the blue shadows, the red roofs and the white walls, and the broken shapes of the shadows betray a psychological drama of human relations. The Old Town does not interest the artist as an item of history, art or culture, but as a place where conflict, human encounters and the passions of modern man are played out.

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album VILNIUS. TOPOPHILIA I (2014). Compiler and author Laima Laučkaitė
Expositions: “Abstraction and Expressionism - Two Traditions of Vilnius Painting”, 04 – 31 July 2009, Gallery of Lithuanian Artists' Association, Vilnius; “Vilnius. Topophilia. Views of Vilnius from the collection of the law firm Ellex Valiunas”, 5 October – 26 November 2017, National Gallery of Art, Vilnius (curator Laima Laučkaitė); "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.
© LATGA, Vilnius 2024

Twentieth-century artists liked to depict the picturesque Skapo Street, but it was usually empty or just had one or two unimportant figures on it. Jonas Švažas (1925–1976) broke the tradition, and turned the street into a stage, on which relations between two people develop. A man and a woman face each other, squeezed between the blank stonework of the Old Town. The anxious assonance of the blue shadows, the red roofs and the white walls, and the broken shapes of the shadows betray a psychological drama of human relations. The Old Town does not interest the artist as an item of history, art or culture, but as a place where conflict, human encounters and the passions of modern man are played out.

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album VILNIUS. TOPOPHILIA I (2014). Compiler and author Laima Laučkaitė
Expositions: “Abstraction and Expressionism - Two Traditions of Vilnius Painting”, 04 – 31 July 2009, Gallery of Lithuanian Artists' Association, Vilnius; “Vilnius. Topophilia. Views of Vilnius from the collection of the law firm Ellex Valiunas”, 5 October – 26 November 2017, National Gallery of Art, Vilnius (curator Laima Laučkaitė); "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.
© LATGA, Vilnius 2024