PORTRAIT THROUGH THE LENS

With the appearance of photography – drawing with light (the term originates from two Greek words: photos (light) and graphe (brush)) – it was presupposed that the old arts would gradually leave the stage. Actually, for centuries portraits on canvas or paper, including figure compositions requiring sitters, were created only by skilful artists. However, the forecasts were wrong. The appearance of photography brought the old art techniques to an even newer level, rather than forcing them to disappear. Painters were no longer required to use illustrative imagery and thus gained abundant opportunities to experiment with colour, form and conceptual ideas. Painting of individual figures gained an entirely new meaning. Ideas and innovative approaches became the focus of the artist's attention. Nevertheless, capturing the essence of a personality or 'capturing the soul' remained of key value, at least in the eyes of the viewers discussing portraits. Capturing the essence of the soul remains one of the key objectives when creating and assessing a photo portrait, too. Did the photograph manage to capture the personality of the person who sat for the portrait? When looking at the photographs of people that we know, we often attempt to identify the mood of the person in the photograph and think to ourselves: 'this does not look like him at all' or 'this is truly his real smile and that deep look is so characteristic of him…'

 

ALEKSANDRA JACOVSKYTĖ – scenographer, graphic and photo artist. Born in 1945 in Vilnius. She started taking pictures while still a child. In 1970, Aleksandra completed her graphic art and scenography studies at the State Institute of Art of the LSSR (current Vilnius Academy of Arts). She has been taking part in exhibitions since 1973 and has been designing costumes for Lithuanian and foreign theatre and cinema since 1981. In 1994, Aleksandra started working for the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum where she curates exhibitions and designs displays. In 2009, she was awarded the Golden Stage Cross. Her artwork can be found in Lithuanian and foreign museums, including private collections.

 

According to Jacovskytė, photography is a form of communication between people. As an artist who takes photographs for aesthetic reasons, it is important to her that the people posing for a photograph remain themselves and stay the way she knows them. The exhibition Portrait Through the Lens presents portraits of Lithuanian Jewish artists and cultural workers through the eyes of Jacovskytė. All of them are members of one big family of artists. Jacovskytė loves the framing technique and pays a lot of attention to details.

    Aleksandra Jacovskytė. Man Ray. Pencil on paper . 2009

Photographer, artist and scenographer Jacovskytė draws both 'with light' and pencil. The exhibition presents a portrait, created by Jacovskytė, of Man Ray (USA, 1890–France 1976) – the great pioneer of avant-garde photography – who was born in Pennsylvania into a family of Jewish emigrants from Kaunas. Portraits of Pablo Picasso and Coco Channel, just like the photographs by the Dadaist and surrealist himself, were created during the interwar period. These images became the part of the collections of the Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History a few years ago and they have never been publically displayed as the part of the collection before. It was the technique that he invented – rayography – that Jean Cocteau, a French poet, dramatist and painter, first referred to as 'drawing with light'.

    Voilin d‘Ingres. 1924

   Coco Chanel. 1935

    Pablo Picasso and His Dog. 1934

The exhibition Portrait Through the Lens combines both types of art allowing us to perceive a portrait or a figure composition on several different levels, that is through the personality of the individual depicted in a portrait (sometimes it is a self-portrait), the self-expression of the artist through a particular figure composition and, finally, the photographic portrait of the artist themselves. The exhibition presents artwork from the Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History collection and photographs by Aleksandra Jacovskytė portraying Lithuanian Jewish artists, such as Samuel Bak, Moshe Rozenthalis, Adasa Skliutauskaitė, Augustinas, Raimondas and Ramunė Savickas, Adomas and Jokūbas Jacovskis, Elena Nona Zavadskienė, Solomonas Teitelbaumas. The exhibition also includes a portrait of Jacovskytė painted by Elena Nona Zavadskienė in 1987.

     During the opening of the exhibition in Savickas Art Gallery. 2005

    Girl with Green Dress. Oil on canvas, 1996

    Augustinas Savickas after the presentation of his book The Green Silence at Vilnius Town Hall. 2009

     Artist’s Portrait. Oil on canvas, 2016

    Grandfather. Oil on canvas, 2015

    Adomas Jacovskis at the opening of Augustinas Savickas exhibition at Savickas Art Gallery. 2005

    Jokūbas. Oil on canvas, 1981

    Property of Jokūbas Jacovskis

    Jokūbas. Oil on canvas, 1982 

    Woman’s Portrait. Oil on canvas, 1994

     Portrait of Jokūbas Josadė. Oil on canvas, 1956

     Moshe Rozenthalis with Aleksandra Jacovskytė at his studio in Tel Aviv. 2007

    Diptic Remembering Chagall I, II.

    Mix media on paper, 2009

    Adasa Skliutauskaitė at the opening

    of the  exhibition at AP gallery, 2019

    Adasa Skliutauskaitė at the opening of the exhibition at Arka gallery, 2001

     Visting his hometown first time after after WWII. 2001

    Self-portrait. Pencil on paper, 1945

     Solomonas Teitelbaumas at the Laiptai art gallery in Šiauliai, 2019

     Self-portrait. Oil on canvas, 2004

     Solomonas Teitelbaumas with Adomas Jacovskis at the Laiptai Art Gallery in Šiauliai. 2019

     Elena Nona Zavadskienė in the backyard, 27th of April, 2020

    Portrait of Composer Anatolijus Šenderovas . Pastel on paper, 1992

    Composer Anatolijus Šenderovas and culturologist Prof. Irena Veisaitė

    at Vilnius Book Fair, 2016

    Portrait of Adomas Jacovskis. Pastel on paper, 1988

    Portrait of Aleksandra Jacovskyte. Oil on canvas, 1987