Woman with a mirror

An inscription on the back of the picture reads: Dail. A. Petruliui / Dailės akademija Vilnius / siunčia: A. Petrulis / Natiškių vien. / Vabalninko paš. / (aps. Biržai)(To the artist A. Petrulis / Vilnius Academy of Art / from A. Petrulis / Natiškiai farmstead / Vabalninkas post office / Biržai district). At first sight, it looks as if the painter was sending himself a picture he had painted during his holiday in the country because he could not take it back to the city himself. However, Petrulis later helped to divulge the picture’s secret. This is what he wrote in 2001 about Woman with a mirror: ‘Antanas Gudaitis liked it. That’s why the work means so much to me. It was painted during the Nazi occupation. My stepmother sent me a parcel in a bag, and wrote the address on it with a pencil. I stretched the bag on a frame, and painted a picture on it, and the address stayed on the back’ (Algirdas Petrulis, ed. by B. Patašienė, Vilnius, 2001, p. 10). This story helps us to understand the hardship of the war years, and invites us to think about the material conditions under which works of art were created.

Algirdas Petrulis (1915–2010) painted scenes that appear simple at first sight. His pictures are explicit and usually homey, although they do not always exude comfort. The artist is sensitive to mood, colour and light, and renders them skilfully, at the same time as inviting us to plunge into the eternal routine of life through the rhythms of nature, and to enjoy small but trusty things which confer stability and provide guidelines and benchmarks, of which the beginning and end of life are the most important. This interior with a still-life, painted during the war and typical of the difficult existence at that time (half a loaf of bread, a clay bowl, a blue-green glass bottle, and an ordinary cup), seems itself to evince the shortages of war. On the other side of the canvas is a note which confirms that the picture was painted on a bag from a food parcel (see More Than Just Beauty, by G. Jankevičiūtė, Vilnius, 2012, p. 246).

Text author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album MORE THAN JUST BEAUTY (2012). Compiler and author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė, OBJECTS ON SHOW (2017). Compiler and author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė, KAUNAS–VILNIUS / 1918–1945 (2021). Compilers and text authors Dovilė Barcytė and Ieva Burbaitė
Expositions: “More Than Just Beauty: The Image of Woman in the LAWIN collection”, 12 October – 11 November 2012, National Gallery of Art, Vilnius; "1918-1945 / Kaunas-Vilnius", 27 August 2020 – 21 August 2021, Lithuanian Art Centre TARTLE (Užupio St. 40, Vilnius). Curators Dovilė Barcytė and Ieva Burbaitė.
© LATGA, Vilnius 2024

An inscription on the back of the picture reads: Dail. A. Petruliui / Dailės akademija Vilnius / siunčia: A. Petrulis / Natiškių vien. / Vabalninko paš. / (aps. Biržai)(To the artist A. Petrulis / Vilnius Academy of Art / from A. Petrulis / Natiškiai farmstead / Vabalninkas post office / Biržai district). At first sight, it looks as if the painter was sending himself a picture he had painted during his holiday in the country because he could not take it back to the city himself. However, Petrulis later helped to divulge the picture’s secret. This is what he wrote in 2001 about Woman with a mirror: ‘Antanas Gudaitis liked it. That’s why the work means so much to me. It was painted during the Nazi occupation. My stepmother sent me a parcel in a bag, and wrote the address on it with a pencil. I stretched the bag on a frame, and painted a picture on it, and the address stayed on the back’ (Algirdas Petrulis, ed. by B. Patašienė, Vilnius, 2001, p. 10). This story helps us to understand the hardship of the war years, and invites us to think about the material conditions under which works of art were created.

Algirdas Petrulis (1915–2010) painted scenes that appear simple at first sight. His pictures are explicit and usually homey, although they do not always exude comfort. The artist is sensitive to mood, colour and light, and renders them skilfully, at the same time as inviting us to plunge into the eternal routine of life through the rhythms of nature, and to enjoy small but trusty things which confer stability and provide guidelines and benchmarks, of which the beginning and end of life are the most important. This interior with a still-life, painted during the war and typical of the difficult existence at that time (half a loaf of bread, a clay bowl, a blue-green glass bottle, and an ordinary cup), seems itself to evince the shortages of war. On the other side of the canvas is a note which confirms that the picture was painted on a bag from a food parcel (see More Than Just Beauty, by G. Jankevičiūtė, Vilnius, 2012, p. 246).

Text author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album MORE THAN JUST BEAUTY (2012). Compiler and author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė, OBJECTS ON SHOW (2017). Compiler and author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė, KAUNAS–VILNIUS / 1918–1945 (2021). Compilers and text authors Dovilė Barcytė and Ieva Burbaitė
Expositions: “More Than Just Beauty: The Image of Woman in the LAWIN collection”, 12 October – 11 November 2012, National Gallery of Art, Vilnius; "1918-1945 / Kaunas-Vilnius", 27 August 2020 – 21 August 2021, Lithuanian Art Centre TARTLE (Užupio St. 40, Vilnius). Curators Dovilė Barcytė and Ieva Burbaitė.
© LATGA, Vilnius 2024