Traveling musician

Vytautas Kasiulis (1918–1995) was hailed as a rising star in Lithuanian art during the Second World War. Having studied decorative painting in 1941 at the Kaunas Institute of Applied and Decorative Art under Stasys Ušinskas, he participated in exhibitions and soon gained admirers and started to win awards. His composition Pieta (also known as The grief of the Mother of God), which was shown in a group art exhibition in Kaunas in 1942, won the prize of the Spaudos žodis company ( J.M-tis, ‘Awarded Artists’, Naujoji sodyba, 1942, No 6, p. 314). In 1943 at the age of 25, he held the first solo exhibition in the Vytautas the Great Museum of Culture, and was praised in press reviews for reviving genre painting, which had not been popular in the interwar period, and for his satirical compositions which appealed to lovers of salon painting, and also because his pictures resembled works from earlier eras. Dark colours, a dramatic mood, and grotesque and marginal characters are characteristic features of Kasiulis’ wartime works. He left for Vienna in 1944 to continue his studies, and never returned to Lithuania.

Text authors Dovilė Barcytė and Ieva Burbaitė

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album KAUNAS–VILNIUS / 1918–1945 (2021). Compilers and text authors Dovilė Barcytė and Ieva Burbaitė

Vytautas Kasiulis (1918–1995) was hailed as a rising star in Lithuanian art during the Second World War. Having studied decorative painting in 1941 at the Kaunas Institute of Applied and Decorative Art under Stasys Ušinskas, he participated in exhibitions and soon gained admirers and started to win awards. His composition Pieta (also known as The grief of the Mother of God), which was shown in a group art exhibition in Kaunas in 1942, won the prize of the Spaudos žodis company ( J.M-tis, ‘Awarded Artists’, Naujoji sodyba, 1942, No 6, p. 314). In 1943 at the age of 25, he held the first solo exhibition in the Vytautas the Great Museum of Culture, and was praised in press reviews for reviving genre painting, which had not been popular in the interwar period, and for his satirical compositions which appealed to lovers of salon painting, and also because his pictures resembled works from earlier eras. Dark colours, a dramatic mood, and grotesque and marginal characters are characteristic features of Kasiulis’ wartime works. He left for Vienna in 1944 to continue his studies, and never returned to Lithuania.

Text authors Dovilė Barcytė and Ieva Burbaitė

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album KAUNAS–VILNIUS / 1918–1945 (2021). Compilers and text authors Dovilė Barcytė and Ieva Burbaitė