GENERATIONS AND DESTINIES

 

 

 

Five artists, four generations and more than a century of Lithuanian history which told ruthlessly on the fate of the Savickas family. Or should it be spelled ‘the Savickis family’? This one-letter difference in the family name is a symbol of the entire epoch that sank into oblivion, including the historic turning-point ordained by World War II, which terminated Algirdas Savickis’ (1917-1943) life at such a young age.

 

Even his father Jurgis did not quite know why Augustinas changed his family name to Savickas. In his memoirs ‘Green Silence’ (2002) Augustinas wrote: ‘When the war began I ran from Lithuania to the Soviet Union. My brother Algirdas and my mother stayed in Lithuania. They both perished. <..> I understood that if I kept my original family name, I would face hard times in the Soviet Union. First of all, I tore to pieces my diplomatic passport which read ‘AUGUSTINAS de SAVICKIS’ (the French ‘de’ was a symbol of aristocratic descent).’ ‘After an obsessive but unsuccessful search for the Soviet paradise’ in the Machishche stone-pit and several repeated attempts to take his own life out of sheer desperation, Augustinas returned to Lithuania. He was destined to become one of the most famous painters of Lithuania and a PhD in art critique. The tragic fate of his mother and brother left an indelible mark on the artist’s creative life and was reflected in many of his sad large-scale paintings. By adopting a different family name Augustinas adopted a different identity of the new epoch. Nonetheless, his past life ‘haunted’ his soul in many different ways.

‘You and Algirdas loved to draw with coloured pencils. Algirdas used to draw trees and a man with a medal standing next to them. You tended to draw the sun and fantastic ships,’ said Salomėja Aleksienė, Algirdas’ and Augustinas’ babysitter (A. Savickas. Žalia tyla [Green Silence], 2002). Both boys had an inclination for the arts from a very young age. After graduation from Wickersdorf boarding school in Germany and his studies in St. Galen, Switzerland, Algirdas took painting classes with prof. Justinas Vienožinskis at the Art School of Kaunas. Only three of his paintings survived, but all three of them attest that Algirdas was a talented painter influenced by the then popular modernist trend. Algirdas used dampened, dark colours and grey tones to tune down all the bright colours. He had a good sense of the overall colour of a painting. Algirdas’ choice of colours reminds that of prof. J. Vienožinskis (and his contemporaries), but his form of expression is totally different: much more modern, with angular lines and even rudiments of distorted forms which were so popular among expressionists. In 1995, painter Valerija Juškienė, who studied together with Algirdas at the Art School of Kaunas, shared her memories: ‘Savickis’ works were very good and interesting. He was quiet, calm, friendly, concentrated and immersed in his inner world.  Algirdas’ works were very good, because he seemed to have worked on it already. His works looked like they were painted by a real master rather than a student.’ The surviving works of Algirdas Savickis, i.e. ‘Sitter Uze’ (1937), ‘Woman in Front of a Mirror’ (1940) and ‘Panorama of Kaunas’ (1940), serve as evidence that the painter had a perfect sense of composition, was good at conveying the overall mood of a painting and had mastered the proportions of a human body. The ‘Panorama of Kaunas’ looks more like a sketch and boasts a rather non-traditional composition with a bulky shape of the monumental Christ Resurrection Church. There are several intersecting fences and a wooden pole in the foreground of the painting which break it down into several separate sections; and there is a clear-cut contrast between white snow and greyish winter sky.

 

We do not know if Algirdas continued to paint trees and men with medals as a grown up (in his childhood he could have chosen to draw these images because of his father Jurgis who received a number of awards as a diplomat). In his mature years as a painter, Augustinas took over his brother’s visions. Augustinas’ works depicting his family are dominated by an archetypical, generalised figure (sometimes even more than one) which is usually painted on a deep, dark green background (e.g. ‘Grey Spring’, 1992). Augustinas’ characters are filled with melancholy, tragedy and loneliness. Often it is an archetypical figure of his mother, whom Augustinas missed very much for the rest of his life. The figures are distorted and look slightly reminiscent of the pensive Christ. The background of his paintings also remains rather abstract. Even though it is still possible to discern some species of flora, they are presented in a stylised manner and remind of the ‘painted’ Lithuanian folk woodcarvings. Sometimes the painter chooses gold yellow for a background, which reminds of the timeless space characteristic of an icon with no remnants of the material world and with life happening on a completely different inner level. Augustinas ‘puts’ his real identity on canvas: his close relations with his Jewish mother and the rest of the world which she represents (‘Sad Jew’ (1996), ‘Hermits’ (1990–1998)), including himself as a son of a diplomat who promoted the Lithuanian identity, and conveys it all with a sense of the omnipresent Lithuanian environment.

 

Interestingly enough, Augustinas’ son Raimondas Savickas (1955), a graduate of Vilnius University and a representative of the next generation of artists, borrowed the image of ‘the sun and ships’ from his father’s childhood drawings and used it in his paintings. Raimondas Savickas studied painting at his father’s studio and later at the Art School of Vilnius for four years. Raimondas discovered his own style by playing with numerous combinations of bright colours. His painting ‘Childhood Days’ (1992-2017) portrays a serene family holiday scene with three shining suns, a sailing ship and a mother watching her son play. The painting evokes nostalgia and tender sadness. The sunny days are already gone, but the painting is a reflexion on his father’s and grandfather’s childhood still untouched by war, just as it is a reflexion on our own childhood when any losses were unthinkable and the world reminded of a beautiful golden ball. Raimondas painted the ‘String Duet’ (2017) to commemorate his uncle Algirdas. The music that his uncle loved so much keeps playing for ever. There are four suns in the sky. The river of time takes us to the moment where both brothers – Algirdas and Augustinas – were having time (or in this case playing) together.

AND FLOWERS

P.S.

 

Jurgis Savickis (1890-1952) was a broadly educated man, writer and diplomat. All his life he remained interested in art and had a collection of Lithuanian and folk art. Jurgis Savickis was the patriarch of the Savickis (Savickas) dynasty. The geopolitical convolutions of the 20^th century did not spare the family of Jurgis and Ida. Their elder son Algirdas was not destined to unfold his artistic talent. Their other son Augustinas, classic of the Lithuanian art, lost his brother and mother at a very young age and painfully missed them for the rest of his life. According to Augustinas Savickas, his ‘father was interested in everything. He was more than just an artist or a writer. He was a politician. He was a politician with the worldview of an artist.’