Viktoras Vizgirda (January 1, 1904 – July 10, 1993) was a Lithuanian painter. He is mostly known for landscapes and

still life A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, m ...

, but he also did portraits.

Biography

Vizgirda was born at the Dominikoniai farm in

Garliava Garliava (), is a city in Lithuania, considered a suburb of Kaunas. Garliava is located south from the Centras (Kaunas), center of Kaunas and has a territory of 3,65 km2. In 1809 Józef Godlewski built a Holy Trinity church and named it '' ...

'' volost'',

Lithuania Lithuania (; lt, Lietuva ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublika, links=no ), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania ...

, then part of the Russian Empire. His father, Jonas Vizgirda, was a farmer and surveyor. In 1914, during World War I, after the farm was destroyed and his father died, he and his mother moved to

Kaunas Kaunas (; ; also see other names) is the second-largest city in Lithuania after Vilnius and an important centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaunas was the largest city and the centre of a county in the Duchy of Trakai ...

.Viktoras Liutkus
Viktoras Vizgirda(1904–1993)
Tumo Gallery"Facts about Viktoras Vizgirda"
/ref> In 1926, he graduated from the Kaunas Art School and from 1926 to 1927 he continued his education in Paris, where he became acquainted with the works of French modernists

Paul Cézanne Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a ...

, Raoul Dufy, Henri Matisse,

André Derain André Derain (, ; 10 June 1880 – 8 September 1954) was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse. Biography Early years Derain was born in 1880 in Chatou, Yvelines, Île-de-France, just outside Paris. I ...

. From 1928 to 1933, he taught in high schools. From 1934 to 1940, he taught at the First Kaunas School of Crafts ( lt, Kauno I amatų mokykla). From 1936 to 1938, he was the chairman of the Union of Lithuanian Artists. From 1941 to 1943, he was the director of the

Vilnius Academy of Arts The Vilnius Academy of Arts ( lt, Vilniaus dailės akademija, previously ''State Art Institute of Lithuania'') in Vilnius, Lithuania, grants a variety of degrees in the arts. History The Academy traces its roots back to the creation of the Arc ...

. In 1944, he emigrated to the West and lived in Vienna, Tübingen, and Berlin. From 1946 to 1949 he worked at the School of Arts and Crafts (''

Werkkunstschule A Kunstgewerbeschule (English: ''School of Arts and Crafts'' or S''chool of Applied Arts'') was a type of vocational arts school that existed in German-speaking countries from the mid-19th century. The term Werkkunstschule was also used for thes ...

'') in Freiburg. In 1947 he took part in the founding of the Institute of Lithuanian Art in Freiburg and became the first chairman of its board. In 1950 he emigrated to the United States, where he lived in Dorchester, Boston. He died in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Works

His paintings were mostly influenced by his teacher, at the Kaunas Art School, as well as by French post-impressionism. Since 1930 he had personal exhibitions in the West and in

, also posthumously. In museums, his works are owned by the

Lithuanian National Museum of Art Lithuanian National Museum of Art is the largest national museum in Lithuania collecting, restoring, and conserving art as well as historical objects of cultural value while presenting artefacts of national importance in an astonishing number of ...

, the

M. K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum The M. K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum is a group of museums based in Kaunas, Lithuania. It is primarily dedicated to exhibiting and publicizing the works of the painter and musician M.K. Čiurlionis (1875–1911). The museum was founded in ...

, the in Telšiai, the in Šiauliai and in museums outside Lithuania.

Biography

Works

References

Further reading