''Keturi vėjai'' () was a

Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, 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, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

literary movement and

magazine A magazine is a periodical literature, periodical publication, print or digital, produced on a regular schedule, that contains any of a variety of subject-oriented textual and visual content (media), content forms. Magazines are generally fin ...

active in the 1920s. Its followers were known as ''Keturvėjininkai''. The ''Keturi vėjai'' movement is considered to have begun with the publication of

Kazys Binkis Kazys Binkis (16 November 1893 – 27 April 1942) was a Lithuanian poet, journalist, and playwright. Biography Kazys Binkis was born on 16 November 1893 in the village of Gudeliai in Biržai District Municipality. He attended primary school at ...

's and Salys Šemerys's expressionist texts in 1921. On 16 February 1922, with the publication of the manifesto ''Keturių vėjų pranašas'' (''The Prophet of the Four Winds''), Binkis wrote on the movement's values. The magazine was published from 1924 to 1928. The theoretical basis of ''Keturi vėjai'' initially was

futurism Futurism ( ) was an Art movement, artistic and social movement that originated in Italy, and to a lesser extent in other countries, in the early 20th century. It emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such as the ...

which arrived through Russia from the West, which was later was influenced by

cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement which began in Paris. It revolutionized painting and the visual arts, and sparked artistic innovations in music, ballet, literature, and architecture. Cubist subjects are analyzed, broke ...

dadaism Dada () or Dadaism was an anti-establishment art movement that developed in 1915 in the context of the Great War and the earlier anti-art movement. Early centers for dadaism included Zürich and Berlin. Within a few years, the movement had s ...

surrealism Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

, unanimism, and German

expressionism Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

. The most influential futurist for Lithuanian writers was Russian poet

Vladimir Mayakovsky Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky ( – 14 April 1930) was a Russian poet, playwright, artist, and actor. During his early, Russian Revolution, pre-Revolution period leading into 1917, Mayakovsky became renowned as a prominent figure of the Ru ...

. It preached the approach to literature as a collective workshop, promoted a laboratory creative method, and emphasized the word and sound as independent aesthetic values. It sought to combine the cosmopolitan urban civilization and the archaic Lithuanian worldviews. Poet Adomas Jakštas opposed and criticized the movement, calling it "childish play". Members of ''Keturi vėjai'' included founder Kazys Binkis, Augustinas Gricius, Petras Janeliūnas, Juozas Petrėnas, Bronys Raila, Salys Šemerys, Alfonas Šimėnas, Juozas Švaistas, Teofilis Tilvytis, Juozas Tysliava, Juozas Žlabys-Žengė, and others. Members of the closed movement would gather in Binkis's apartment and read their works. Although most of the movement's members were left-leaning, political content was not included in their magazines. The movement dispersed in the late 1920s, although it influenced the '' Trečiafrontininkai'' movement.

References

1924 establishments in Lithuania Defunct literary magazines published in Europe Defunct magazines published in Lithuania Lithuanian literature Lithuanian-language magazines Magazines established in 1924 Magazines disestablished in 1928 {{Europe-lit-mag-stub