Edmundas Armoška's art collection exhibition "Outcrops of Lithuanian Art XVI–XXI Centuries", 3 July – 31 August 2008

Edmundas Armoška's art collection exhibition "Outcrops of Lithuanian Art XVI–XXI Centuries", 3 July – 31 August 2008, Lithuanian Art Museum, Vilnius.

The publication presents the exhibition “Exposures of the Lithuanian Art of the 16-21st centuries“ by Edmundas Armoška, one of the famous Lithuanian fine art collectors. The exhibition was opened in the Radvilos Palace of the Lithuanian Art Museum in Vilnius on 3 July 2008. For more than 40 years E. Armoška has been collecting various paintings, sculptures and works of the applied art. In the past he has accumulated a very valuable collection of furniture, as well as interesting pieces of the Western and Russian art. Having acquired the substantial experience as a collector, he decided to focus on the Lithuanian Language studies and paintings and refused the majority of art works, i.e. the works of lower artistic value etc. The current E.Armoška’s collection has a clear goal and vision and seeks to include all manifestations of the development of the Lithuanian fine arts. It is the most extensive and significant among all private painting collections. The exhibition visitors saw it as it was.

E. Armoška has been collecting painting, sculpture and applied art works for more than 40 years. In the past, he had also collected a very valuable collection of furniture, and had interesting works of Western and Russian art. However, according to Dr. N. Tumėnienė, having gained considerable experience as a collector, he decided to concentrate all his attention on Lithuanian studies and painting, abandoned many works of art, first of all of lower artistic value and gradually – other fields of art. The current collection of E. Armoška is distinguished by the fact that it is compiled in a very purposeful way in order to cover all manifestations of the development of Lithuanian art in painting, and is the largest and most significant of all private painting collections. The visitors of the exhibition also saw it as such.

In the opinion of Dr. Nijolė Tumėnienė, E. Armoška's Lithuanian collection is the largest and most significant of all private painting collections accumulated in Lithuania. The exhibition featured 232 works of art – about a third of E. Armoška's entire collection. The most valuable painting in it is painting from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Of the works of old painting, E. Armoška's collection is decorated with a particularly interesting painting by an unknown artist of the sixteenth century – the icon "St. The Mother of God with the Child". According to specialists, the painting could be associated with the art of Western Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The exhibition featured several other paintings that are rarely seen in Lithuania. A number of works by artists of the Vilnius Art School and their pupils accumulated by E. Armoška were also selected for it, including the painting "The Allegory of Redemption" by Pranciškus Smuglevičius, as well as canvases painted by other artists of the famous Smuglevičius family – P. Smuglevičius' father Lukas and Feliksas Smuglevičius. The exhibition supplemented the knowledge of art history about the artists of several generations of the Römers – famous and lesser-known. It was also possible to see the very valuable works of Kazimieras Stabrowskas, the head of the Warsaw Art School, a participant in the first Lithuanian art exhibitions in the twentieth century, at the end of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Vilnius Drawing School pupils.

A significant part of the exhibition consisted of paintings painted by artists of independent Lithuania in the first half of the twentieth century – Adomas Varnas, Justinas Vienožinskis, Adomas Galdikas, Petras Kalpokas, Viktoras Vizgirda, Antanas Samuolis and many others. They testify to the development of painting of that period and the variety of directions.

During the opening of the exhibition, Dr. N. Tumėnienė, presenting the exhibition to the public, noted that in recent years, E. Armoška's collection "has become the queen of Lithuanian painting from the times of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and mainly from the establishment of the Vilnius Art School to the present day."

According to Dr. N. Tumėnienė, E. Armoška collects the works of artists living in Lithuania in the second half of the twentieth century, "taking into account the artistic achievements of each of them, giving preference to widely recognized authors, most of whom have gone abroad. First of all, the teacher of most painters, Antanas Gudaitis, who managed to go at the forefront of coloristic expressive Lithuanian painting. Only in the collection of E. Armoška one can get acquainted with all the works of Šarūnas Sauka. The exhibition featured the artist's programmatic work "Hell".

E. Armoška's collection contains many of the best works of Antanas Martinaitis, including the last paintings created by the painter that are extremely valuable. According to Dr. N. Tumėnienė, the concept of painting of the older generation with works of high artistic level is represented by Augustinas Savickas, Leonas Katinas, and Jonas Švažas. Younger generations – Vincas Kisarauskas, Algimantas Švėgžda, Raimundas Sližys, Algimantas Kuras, Linas Katinas, Jonas Daniliauskas, Algis Skačkauskas. The collection of E. Armoška's paintings surprises with the broad ambitions of a private art collector. Today, it is clear that this is not only due to the opportunities that others can boast of. The most important thing is patriotism, noble life goals, extraordinary ability to understand the art market, which requires knowledge, good taste, understanding and special talent."

Prepared by Danguolė Želvytė