Vytautas Kairiūkštis

Biography

The New Art Exhibition in Vilnius ran from 20 May to 20 June 1923. It was organised by Vytautas Kairiūkštis, with the help of Władysław Strzemiński, who had moved to the city a year earlier. The show included Cubist, Constructivist and Suprematist works; nothing of the kind had been shown in Lithuania before.

Kairiūkštis was born on 14 November 1890 in Sejny, then part of the Kingdom of Poland. His father, Juozas Kairiūkštis, was a teacher; his mother, Julija Kairiūkštienė-Vichertaitė, wrote poetry and translated. His sister Halina became an art historian and ethnographer, and one of his brothers, Stasys, taught in Vilnius and later in Kaunas.

He learned to draw in Vilnius, at the drawing school of Ivan Trutnev, in 1910–1912 (by other accounts, only 1910–1911). He belonged to a secret artists’ circle led by Ferdynand Ruszczyc. In 1912–1913 he worked in Konstantin Yuon’s studio in Moscow and at the same time studied law at Moscow University, completing the course in 1913–1916. In 1917–1918 he took lessons from Nikolai Kasatkin at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. After that his biography runs through the years of war and revolution. In 1918–1919 he worked in Voronezh as an instructor in the visual arts in the department of public education. In 1919 he was mobilised into the Red Army and served in the culture department of the staff of the 5th Army in Irkutsk. The painting “Evening in Irkutsk” (1920) comes from that time. In 1920–1921 Kairiūkštis studied with Pavel Kuznetsov at Vkhutemas, the state art and technical workshops in Moscow.

In 1921 he settled in Vilnius and taught drawing in secondary schools. He ran a painting studio (in 1923–1930); among those who studied with him was Vladas Drėma. In 1924 Kairiūkštis joined the Polish avant-garde group Blok, which brought together Cubists, Constructivists and Suprematists, and took part in its exhibitions. Later he also exhibited with the group Praesens (1926–1929). His friends included Henryk Stażewski, Mieczysław Szczuka and Teresa Żarnower. Among his early works are “Concert in a Café” (1921), “Portrait of Jonas Basanavičius” (1922) and “Cubist Self-Portrait” (1923); there are also several Suprematist compositions, as well as photomontages.

In 1925–1929 he travelled in France, Germany, Denmark and Italy, getting to know new trends; by some accounts the journeys continued until 1931. He contributed to the bilingual Paris magazine “L’Art Contemporain – Sztuka Współczesna”, published by Jan Brzękowski in 1929–1930. In 1931 he graduated externally from Stefan Batory University. A year later he was elected vice-president of the Lithuanian Society of Literature and Art in Vilnius and admitted to the Lithuanian Artists’ Union.

From 1937 he taught in Kaunas. In 1940–1944 he worked at the Čiurlionis Museum, then at the Kaunas Institute of Decorative and Applied Arts (1944–1951), becoming a docent, a university teaching rank, in 1947. On retiring, in 1952 he returned to Vilnius.

His manner changed. His early works show Cubism and Constructivism, while the landscapes are closer to Impressionism; in the 1930s the influence of Post-Impressionism appeared, and after the war his painting became more realistic. He painted figure compositions, portraits, landscapes and still lifes, mainly in oil and pastel, among them “Beaches” (1928) and “Windmill in Panevėžys” (1936). He also did applied graphics. He wrote about art too: his monograph on Kajetonas Šklėrius appeared in 1938, as did a work on Čiurlionis, along with articles on art theory. His exhibitions were held in Vilnius, Kaunas, Riga and Tallinn.

Kairiūkštis died on 13 June 1961 in Vilnius and was buried in Bernardine Cemetery. A solo exhibition in Vilnius took place in 1970, after his death. His works are held in the Lithuanian Art Museum and the Čiurlionis National Museum of Art.