Exhibition "Pagan Lithuanian Painter Kazimieras Alchimavičius", 29 October – 13 December 2020
Exhibition "Pagan Lithuanian Painter Kazimieras Alchimavičius", 29 October – 13 December 2020, Vilnius Picture Gallery. The exhibition is dedicated to the 180th anniversary of the artist's birth.
Kazimieras Alchimavičius was most famous for his large-format paintings depicting the antiquity of Lithuania, and especially the history and mythology of pagan times ("Milda", "Gediminas' Funeral", "Lizdeika with her daughter Pajauta on the ruins of the Temple of Perkūnas", "The Death of Margiris", etc.). For this reason, he is often called the painter of pagan Lithuania, "the Adam Mickiewicz of painting".
The artist comes from the former lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (born on 20 December 1840 in Dambrava, Lida county), and graduated from high school in Vilnius. He belonged to the generation of Lithuanian and Polish artists, whose life and work were left by the uprising of 1863. After fighting in the vicinity of Vilnius and Lida, after the uprising, K. Alchimavičius was exiled to Vierchchutor outside the Urals, where he spent six years. After the amnesty, he settled in Warsaw, studied in the Drawing Class (Klasa Rysunkowa) under the auspices of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts and in the private studio of Wojciech Gerson. In 1873–1875 he continued his art studies at the Munich Academy of Arts with Alexander Wagner, and spent 1876–1878 in France. At the end of 1877 or 1878, the artist settled in Warsaw, opened a painting studio here in 1880, and from 1890 taught drawing at the Bronisława Poświkowa School of Painting and Sculpture. K. Alchimavičius died on December 31, 1916. In Warsaw, he was buried in the Povonzki cemetery.
The artist painted monumental neo-romantic compositions on the themes of Lithuanian history and mythology, landscapes of the Vilnius area, the Tatras and the Pienini Mountains, household compositions, portraits, created paintings on the themes of the 1863 uprising and exile, paintings and wall painting compositions for churches. He often drew inspiration from the works of Romantic poets, created a cycle of 12 paintings based on the motifs of Adam Mickiewicz's poem "Mr. Tadas".
K. Alchimavičius participated in exhibitions in Poland, as well as in Vilnius (1893, 1897, 1899, 1902, 1905, 1908, 1911, 1914), St. Petersburg, Munich, Vienna, Paris, Berlin, Ghent, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, etc. He was highly regarded by critics and won several awards. In 1888 In St. Petersburg he received the first prize of the Art Society for his composition "The Funeral of Gediminas", and in 1889 he was awarded the Nobel Prize. In Paris for the same work – a gold medal. In 1890, the artist was awarded the first prize in the W. Gerson competition for the painting "Milda", and in 1891 he was awarded the small gold medal for the same work at the International Art Exhibition in Berlin. In 1893 and 1898 K. Alchimavičius received awards from the magazine "Tygodnik Ilustrowany", and in 1894 he received a silver medal at the exhibition in Lviv. The favourable assessments of art critics were accompanied by the interest of collectors. The works of K. Alchimavičius were in great demand in the art market. Unfortunately, for a long time in Lithuania we had only four works by this artist, which are kept in the Lithuanian National Museum of Art – two paintings donated by the artist himself to the Vilnius Museum of Art and Science at the beginning of the twentieth century, and two drawings. It is gratifying that during the 30 years of the restored independence of Lithuania, thanks to Lithuanian collectors, their number has increased, and in the exhibition dedicated to the 180th anniversary of the artist's birth, we can show not four, but fifteen works of various genres and themes. Among them is a replica of the famous "Milda", painted by the artist himself in 1910.