Exhibition "Only Saints. The Journey of Christian Images in Professional and Folk Art," June 6, 2024 – May 1, 2025.

The exhibition "Saints Only. Journeys of Christian Images in Professional and Folk Art", 6 June 2024 – 1 May 2025, Lithuanian Art Knowledge Centre "Tartle", Vilnius.

A new exhibition "Saints Only" is opening today at the Lithuanian Art Knowledge Centre "Tartle", inviting you to take a look at the journeys of Christian images in folk and professional art. The exhibition presents saints who came from both the sixteenth century and contemporary authors' workshops.

Some of them were created by artists who had been learning a professional craft for many years, while others were self-taught rural craftsmen who created from faith, in their own ways and means. The seventh Tartle exhibition exhibits part of the world's largest publicly available private collection of Lithuanian folk art, as well as extremely rare early works of church art, works by modernists, classics of Lithuanian art, and artists of the younger generation.

In the exhibition halls, the curators Dr. Skaidrė Urbonienė and Emilija Vanagaitė put together a fragmentary narrative that presents the most important iconographic themes of Lithuanian folk Christian art: from the universal pain (Pieta, Rūpintojėlis, The Crucifixion of Jesus), Christian love and hope (St. The Virgin Mary the Gracious), the fight against evil (St. St. George), penance (St. Mary Magdalene) to local, but very important images for the religious and national identity of the nation (the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Gates of Dawn). The Virgin Mary, the Blessed Virgin Mary of Šiluva. The Virgin Mary, St. Kazimieras).

The earliest works of religious art from the sixteenth century

The exhibition begins with one of the most significant themes in Christian culture – the Blessed Virgin Mary. Images of the Virgin Mary. Two exhibits of this exhibition are extremely rare in Lithuania – they are paintings created by unknown artists in the sixteenth century. The oldest works of the exhibition are exhibited next to works by modern and contemporary artists created on the same theme. For example, the early Blessed Virgin Mary. The images of the Virgin Mary and Child, painted on a wooden panel, are combined in the exhibition with a modern interpretation made by spraying aerosol paint with an airbrush. These chronological and technical juxtapositions make it possible to highlight the unfading beauty of Christian symbols.

Gods created by gods

According to Lithuanian folk art expert and curator of the exhibition Dr. S. Urbonienė, many Lithuanian artists and cultural figures have been interested in folk art since the times of the national revival, collected its samples, drew and photographed. For example, Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis wrote in 1908 that Lithuanian folk art "is our pride, because the beauty that it has in itself is pure, peculiar and exclusively Lithuanian."

"Interest in folk art, especially sculptures carved by godmakers, often called gods, continued during the interwar period and the Soviet period. A number of artists accumulated larger or smaller collections of folk art, in which these statuettes predominated. In their iconography and sculpture, a painter, graphic artist or sculptor often looked for ideas, motifs, and plastic solutions," says S. Urbonienė.

Highlights of the exhibition – Rūpintojėlis and Jesus of Nazareth

The founder of Tartle, collector Rolandas Valiūnas, notes that although we have all heard something about one or another saint, we do not know all the more interesting details. For example, during the interwar period, it was decided that it was the figure of Rūpintojėlis that would represent Lithuania abroad. Although there were those who criticized such a painful choice, in the end, at the 1937 Paris World Exhibition, it was this figure that attracted everyone's attention and became a symbol of Lithuania at that time. The oak sculpture of Rūpintojėlis, created according to the project of sculptor Juozas Mikėnas, was almost 3 meters high. A photo of this sculpture can be seen in the exhibition.

It is also possible to get acquainted with ten images of Jesus of Nazareth, the prototype of which is a 1.90-meter-high statue of Jesus of Nazareth, standing in St. Peter's Church. Peter and Paul, which is visited by the townspeople and guests of the city. But do you know the history of its origin? "First of all, it belonged to the Vilnius Trinitarian Church of Jesus of Nazareth, founded by the Sapiegas. While the temple was still being built in 1700, the Roman Trinitarians ordered and sent to Vilnius the head and hands of its statue dedicated to the high altar. The body of the statue itself was already created in Vilnius. In 1864, when the Tsarist government closed the Trinitarian monastery and church of Antakalnis, the statue of Jesus of Nazareth was moved to the adjacent St. Peter's Church in Vilnius. Peter and Paul," the collector unfolds the pages of history.

Next to folk art – interpretations of contemporary artists

The curator of the exhibition, art critic E. Vanagaitė, distinguishes the variety of exhibits in the exhibition. "In the exposition, the works of folk art and professional art of relevant topics that meet with each other point to Christian themes and symbols that have been created with different intentions, but remain relevant. Such a juxtaposition allows us to compare how the same iconographic themes were conveyed by self-taught folk masters and how they were and still are interpreted by professional artists," says the art critic.

For example, folk art motifs for such expatriate artists as Vytautas Ignas, Antanas Mončius or Pranas Domšaitis helped to highlight the Lithuanian identity. During the Soviet era, the artist Albina Makūnaitė, the artists Augustinas Savickas and Leopoldas Surgailis created "in a drawer" on religious themes, and did not exhibit their works publicly, as they often expressed not only their religious attitudes, but also a certain resistance to the Soviet ideology. Meanwhile, contemporary artists Kazimieras Brazdžiūnas, Viltė Čepulytė, Jonas Gasiūnas, and Emilis Benediktas Šeputis have a multifaceted view of Christian symbols – the image is also seen as an opportunity to experiment, a symbolic weight that has already been formed over the centuries, and an opportunity to desacralize those images in their canvases.

Visitors can see more than 150 works, the exhibition is based on exhibits from the extensive Tartle collection, but also works from other private collections. Several exhibits were loaned to the exhibition by Dr. Jaunius Gumbis, Ramutis Petniūnas, Skaidrė Urbonienė, Mindaugas Vanagas, auction house "Ars Via", MO Museum, "The Rooster Gallery". The exhibition aims not only to unfold this privacy screen, but also to emphasize the unfading desire of artists to use Christian images in their work and the desire of collectors to have them for themselves as devotionals.

Architectural solutions of the exhibition

Jurgita Semenauskienė, director of TARTLE, says that it is not the first year that sustainable solutions have been prioritized when creating the architecture of the exhibition: "Our center is one of the founders of the initiative group "Museums Against Climate Change", so we try to reuse the materials used in previous exhibitions so that they do not end up in the trash. We are grateful to the architect of the exhibition, Sigita Simona Paplauskaitė, who very creatively used the building blocks that had already "worked" in the exhibitions."