Exhibition "On the Journey, at Home and in Dreams: Landscapes from the Lewben Art Foundation Collection", 23 March – 30 April 2017

Exhibition "On the Journey, at Home and in Dreams: Landscapes from the Lewben Art Foundation Collection", 23 March – 30 April 2017, Mykolas Žilinskas Art Gallery, Kaunas, 23 March – 30 April 2017.

On Thursday, March 23, at 6 p.m., an exhibition of landscapes accumulated in the collection of the Lewben Art Foundation will open at the M. Žilinskas Art Gallery (Independence Square 12, Kaunas). The exhibition "On the Journey, at Home and in Dreams: Landscapes from the Lewben Art Foundation Collection" is thematic and features works of the landscape genre created from the end of the nineteenth century to the first decade of the 21st century – both panoramic views and works that reveal that landscapes are not only nature. The exhibition presents close to 70 works and over 40 Lithuanian or closely related authors.

The focus of the exhibition is the landscape. This genre has long been popular in Lithuanian art. According to the curator of the exhibition, Ramutė Rachlevičiūtė, during the interwar period, a real painter painted landscapes and portraits – this is how the aspirations of the artist and the viewer, the appraiser, coincided. Such a work could reach private homes, and especially artistic works ended up in museum collections. "The allegorical, mythological, domestic genre certainly attracted not every artist. Not every artist was able to overcome the tasks of figurative composition. An ambiguous situation has arisen: it would seem that it is easier to paint a landscape than a figurative painting, but it must be admitted that an artist who paints landscapes must have not only a painter's talent, but also a special talent as a landscaper," says R. Rachlevičiūtė.

Among the more than 40 artists presented are the creators of panoramic images Mstislavas Dobužinskis, Antanas Žmuidzinavičius, Adomas Galdikas, and the painters of urban and industrial images Igor Piekuras, Jonas Švažas and Kostas Dereškevičius, and finally the postmodernist artists Artūras Raila, Ugnius Gelguda and Linas Jusionis. Viewers will also have the opportunity to evaluate how artists perceive the genre of landscape in different ways when painting or photographing, as the exhibition includes photographs by Vitas Luckus, paintings by Algis Griškevičius, works by Linas Leonas Katinas, Antanas Martinaitis, Vygantas Paukštė, Audrius Puipa, Algis Skačkauskas, Povilas Ričardas Vaitiekūnas, Justinas Vienožinskis, Viktoras Vizgirda and many others.