Per toli gyvenu: Antano Mončio susirašinėjimai

• Zovienė, Danutė, sudarymas [com]
• Turauskaitė, Loreta Birutė, sudarymas [com]
• Januševičiūtė, Ramunė, sudarymas [com]

ENThis book is anchored to the epistolary, documentary and photographic legacy safeguarded in the archives of Antanas Mončys’ House-Museum in Palanga, Lithuania. The artist’s correspondences, a considerable part of which is included into this book, span the period from 1949 through 1993. Their broad geography links Lithuania, USA, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Belgium, Poland, Switzerland, Australia and other countries. The letters included into the book track the trajectories of Mončys’ linkages with his compatriots in emigration, and later on, with his countrymen in Lithuania, especially following the re-establishment of the Lithuanian state independence in 1990 and the fall of the Iron Curtain, when Lithuania “discovered” Mončys’ art. One important group of his letters deals with the return of the sculptor’s artwork to his motherland and with the founding of Antanas Mončys’ House-Museum. Efforts have been put to select letters that reflect most powerfully Mončys’ life and career from his first steps in emigration, at Freiburg Arts and Crafts School in Germany, until the artist’s homecoming with the founding of Antanas Mončys’ House-Museum in Palanga. The book opens with a chronology of life and art of the artist to guide the reader through rather fragmentary correspondences, and with an exhaustive introductory text by Giedrė Asin Marco. Mončys’ letters to his family, different artists, culture and public figures, to the state institutions, as well as the letters written to the sculptor have been written not only in Lithuanian, but also the French, English and German languages and even in the Samogitian dialect. Both handwritten and typed letters in the book are presented in their unrevised form (only spelling and punctuation corrections have been made), some are included in translation and in the original.Some of the letters held by the museum have been returned by the respondents (Julius Veblaitis, Isolde Poželaitė-Davis, Jonas Mockūnas, other Lithuanian emigres; Mončys letters written to the Palubinskas have been handed over by the widow of Vladas Palubinskas, Nijolė Vedegytė-Palubinskienė). Another portion of the original material, Mončys’ letters to his family in Lithuania (to his sisters Bronė, Birutė and Stasė and his cousin Loreta Birutė Turauskaitė) have been handed over to the museum by the sculptor’s sister, Birutė Turauskienė. One other segment of correspondences is drafts of Mončys’ letters to his friends and close associates, and to all kinds of institutions. They have been received by the museum from Mončys’ children Jean Christophe, Andreas and Sabina. It is obvious that a considerable part of Mončys’ correspondence remains in the hands of addresses in Lithuania and abroad. We hope that this book becomes an encouragement to everyone in the possession of the artist’s letters or other documentary material to turn it in to the museum and to enrich its archives. [From the publication]