Leono Katino gyvenimo aprašymas: retorika ir realybė

ENThe personality of Leonas Katinas (1907–1984) disclosed itself every time in new colors in the versions of his biography presented in various publications issued at different periods of time. The artist’s written biography might be rather dull, particularly if it were written not for yourself, or the public, but the employer. The “official” 9-page biography written in 1948 – different. Having an aversion to a historical chronological analysis, one gets tempted by other, particularly psychological methods which could make possible to read the biography hoping to discover more of its layers, or at least one or another still unveiled aspect. Could the painter’s biography “open itself” to A. Adler’s tools of individual psychology? Vytautas Kavolis’ historical-social psychology concerned with the interaction between the personality’s models and the changes in social organization could possibility suit better here. How do art historians start the analysis of a (auto) biography? Make an attempt to re-create the spiritual “self” of the masters, who created in that period, analyze psychological aspects (selfknowledge, the status of professionalism, the milieu surrounding them, the perception of those works by their contemporaries, etc.) and those of artistic existence.The last decade of the 20th century gave the possibility to array the facts of life or creation of one or another person in Lithuania in a new, often unrecognizable way. In the catalogue published in 1994 attention is paid to the facts omitted in the Soviet times: the accent falls on two parallels of his life, those of a military officer and an artist. Leonas Katinas – an exceptional personality: a teacher, an officer, an artist, a painter. A 41-year old painter wrote that he had graduated from Vilnius Institute of Art in 1948 and had worked for three years there. Leonas Katinas put much effort so as not to “fall out” of the context of that period as man and artist, to be not a stranger, to be recognized and estimated.