Robertas Antinis

Robertas Antinis (1898 -1981) - Lithuanian sculptor Robertas Antinis senior was born in Kaldabruna, Latvia, in 1898.In 1921 - 1922 he attended drawing courses in Kaunas, in 1922 - 1927 studied at the Kaunas School of Art with painter Justinas Vienožinskis and sculptor Kajetonas Šklėris.

From 1928 to 1933 he studied at the Higher School of Decorative Arts in Paris. Upon his return, he taught painting at secondary schools in Tauragė and Kaunas, and after World War II at the Kaunas Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts. He died in Kaunas in 1981 and was buried in Petrašiūnai Cemetery. He created sculptures for monuments in Širvintos, Kretinga, Biržai (1931), Rokiškis, Rietavas, Ukmergė, Druskininkai. In Palanga, there is the famous "Spruce the Serpent Queen" sculpture he created and erected in 1958.

R. Antinis prepared projects for memorial museums in Salaspils, Latvia and Kaunas IX Fort. Some of the artist's sculptures were created together with his son Robert Antinis junior.

Antinis was distinguished among the ages by his predilection for the mythological mystery of the archaic form, and he especially felt the power of self-contained and closed, primitive blocks, which became most evident in the artist's later years of maturity. The imaginative mind of the artist did not cling to transparency, but the simplified, heavy and static masses of his sculptures, sometimes rationally smoothed and sometimes emotionally assembled, delved into the mysteries of the ages, searching for strange, magical experiences that awaken the human spirit, testifying to the monotonousness of such sculptures and the bitter, unrelieved beauty.