Exhibition "Personal. Lithuanian Women's Art 1918–1940", 14 April – 4 June 2017
"The exhibition "Personal. Lithuanian Women's Art 1918–1940" dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the first collective exposition of Lithuanian artists' work. This is the first comprehensive presentation of the interwar Lithuanian women's art heritage and at the same time an attempt with the 3-4 decades of the 20th century. To connect previously marginalized personalities with artistic life, whose artistic work is modest or intimate, usually realistic, is nevertheless an integral part of the history of Lithuanian art, reflecting its time and having an impact on contemporaries. The exposition concentrates everything that allows us to cover the diversity of Lithuanian women's art in the first half of the twentieth century.
The exhibition presents exhibits of women's painting, sculpture, and graphics from the Lithuanian Art Gold Fund of the first half of the twentieth century. Visitors will be able to see the creative quests of hitherto little-known authors, as well as works attributed to the "small arts". Additional visual and textual material is used for the interpretation of the exhibits, which expands the guidelines for the perception and interpretation of works of art and art phenomena. The stories of interwar women's art are told here through separate exhibits, selected from the collections of national and national museums of Lithuania, artists' families and private individuals.
One of the highlights of the exposition was the presentation of the first exhibition of Lithuanian women artists held in Kaunas in the autumn of 1937, where the works of forty authors were exhibited. Detailed documentation and comments of this event are provided, actualizing and contextualizing the social significance of the women's exhibition.
The title "Personal" was chosen for the title of the exhibition – an allusion to the discussion about the evaluation of artists' work, which intensified during the interwar period (and is still relevant today), which, on the one hand, was proposed to be characterized according to universal artistic criteria. Proponents of this approach argued that there is simply good and bad art, regardless of the gender of its author. On the other hand, there were voices that women's work is specific, determined by social circumstances and strongly influenced by individual experience. So what was (and is) women's art, artistic or personal? How did the creators of the first half of the twentieth century interpret this question? "I am artistic" – let it be a manifestation of the artists of the past, seeking to stimulate discussion and draw the attention of today's society to the value of women's creativity."