Manifestations of futurism in Lithuanian visual art of the 1920s

ENThis essay discusses the manifestations of Futurism in Lithuanian art of the early 1920s and some of the reasons for why this movement had such a short life in Lithuania. Attention is given to artists such as Vytautas Bičiūnas, Vladimiras Dubeneckis, Olga Schwede-Dubeneckiene and others who spent the years of the First World War in Russia, where they had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with Futurism. When they returned to Lithuania after 1918, their works operated in a mode of geometrical stylization and with themes that were typical of Futurism. However, the ideas and aspirations of Futurism were best understood in Lithuania by a group of young writers who belonged to the Keturi vėjai circle, and by artists close to the group, such as Juozas Petrėnas and Vytautas Kairiūkštis, with Petrėnas adapting Futurism in his works and introducing the principles of Futurism into book design. It was in the mid-1920s that the most interesting manifestations of Futurism took place in Lithuania, first of all in graphic design and then in stage design.However, classical Modernism in Lithuania, as in many other European countries, mutated into Art Deco around 1928. The rise of nationalism and attempts towards social cohesion in a country that had only recently gained independence (in 1918) forced artists into putting more accent on classical values. In this respect, Lithuania offered some parallels to the career of several Futurist artists whose aesthetic ideas and creative works moved into similar directions and whose ‘return to order’ can be detected in the works that were displayed in Paris at the International Exhibition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts in 1925.