Vytautas Bičiūnas: tautodailės baruose

ENThe time itself gave birth to such a personality as V. Bičiūnas. He stimulated the people’s interest in the history, folklore, and folk art of Lithuania, in everything that was connected with the past. It is not enough only to know your past, it is necessary to preserve it. V. Bičiūnas collected the works of folk art and guided the others during the expedition of folk art collecting organized by M. K. Čiurlionis Art Gallery in 1927. He was very much worried about the cultural life of the country. The main landmarks of V. Bičiūnas activities in the field of folk art – scientific research, classification and analysis – are urgent today too. Vytautas Bičiūnas was born in the village of Klovainiai (District of Šiauliai) on September 1, 1893. He studied at Šiauliai Gymnasia. In 1912, he entered the School of Art in Kazan where he studied painting, architecture and literature. While living in St Petersburg Bičiūnas worked for the Lithuanian Comission, edited the newspaper “The Voice of Lithuanians”. In 1918 he returned to Lithuania. During the period of 1920-1923 Bičiūnas was a representative of Christian Democratic Party for the Constituent and the First Seimas. Writer, painter, journalist, literature critic and editor Bičiūnas was exiled together with his family on June 14, 1941. After half of a century it turned out that on October 30, 1942 he was shot dead in the Sosva camp (District of Sverdlovsk).