Šarūnas Sauka

Biography

Sauka painted the diptych “The Battle of Grunwald” in 1987, and in 1989 he received the Lithuanian National Prize for it. The subject comes from the events of the fifteenth century, but it is treated in such a way that the picture is hard to take for historical illustration.

Sauka was born on 11 September 1958 in Vilnius. His father, Donatas Sauka, was a well-known Lithuanian philologist. From 1976 to 1983 Šarūnas studied painting at the Lithuanian State Art Institute, now the Vilnius Academy of Arts. From the early 1980s he took part in the art life of the country, and in 1985 his first solo exhibition was held. After that his work began to be shown abroad: in Luxembourg, Hungary, Germany, Poland and the Scandinavian countries. In 1992 he took part in the biennale in Rauma (Finland), in 1994 he represented Lithuania at the São Paulo International Biennial, and in 2001 he was in the Baltic and Nordic biennale in Visby (Sweden). Since 1989 he has been a member of the group “24”. In 1990 he won a prize at the Eighth Vilnius Painting Triennial.

Sauka’s subjects are recognisable at once. They are scenes of a hell that unfolds here on earth: historical figures from the worlds of culture and politics take part, along with contemporary beauties and often the artist himself, with a grey, disappointed face. Blood, entrails, dismembered bodies and butchery are painted so that they resemble jewels: bright stones, marble, and the silk and velvet of church vestments. The viewer feels admiration and revulsion toward one and the same thing. In a number of pictures the victim and the executioner have the same face, often his own and sometimes those of relatives. His painting also includes still lifes, illustrations, hallucinatory pictures, the cycle “The Passion of the Lord” and the canvas “Hell”, which is regarded as a summary of his ideas. Critics have called this “magic realism”, “the aesthetics of the repulsive” and “ironic painting”. By general opinion he did not follow Lithuanian Expressionism, with its colour experiments and distaste for the literary element, and developed a manner of his own. His subjects and motifs pass from canvas to canvas over the years.

Of his work he once said that creation is “balancing on the very edge of the abyss”. It seems to me more exact than many art-historical formulas: with Sauka the viewer really does watch to see whether he will cross the line.

In 2008–2012 he painted the huge canvas “A Thousand Years for Lithuania”, which is in the Presidential Palace in Vilnius. His works are in the Lithuanian Art Museum, the museum of the Vilnius Academy of Arts, and private collections in Lithuania and abroad. He is also the author of books for children.

Sauka lives and works in Dusetos, a small town among lakes and forests, and is reluctant to give interviews. His honours include the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas, fifth class (1998), the title of honorary citizen of the Zarasai region (2014), the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of Lithuania (2016) and the Baltic Assembly Prize for the Arts (2022).