Giedrė Jankevičiūtė (PDF)
https://doi.org/10.53631/DIS/2014.6.9
The paper deals with the phenomenon of retrospectivism in Lithuanian art of the mid20th century. At the beginning of the paper, while referring to artworks of various genres and forms meant for public use, the author points out the extent to which this art trend was predominant in the Lithuanian art scene throughout WWII. While making references to artworks by artists of the middle and younger generations, the article shows that along with neo-Classicism as emerged in the 1930s, the years of Nazi occupation saw manifestations of more conservative neoTraditionalism aligned with models of Baroque and Romanticism. The analysis of particular examples shows what imagecreating techniques, typical of historical styles, were adopted by artists. During the war, the majority of artists associated with the neoTraditionalism of the 1930s renounced generalisation and geometrisation, characteristic of modernist stylisation, which they had been applying in their previous works, and endeavoured to demonstrate their mastery by creating a suggestive illusion of reality, a strategy familiar to the public from works of historical art. In the second part of the article, the author aims to establish factors that encouraged conservative retrospectivism to emerge in the works of WWII artists. Among the most influential factors, the phenomena of school and model are discussed, emphasising the circulation of imported German art and its reproductions. The article raises the question of to what extent retrospectivism is related to a suggestion to create a European identity after examples of classical art. This concept gained popularity among Lithuanian intellectuals and artists in the 1930s. On the other hand, to what extent might it have been a part of the strategy of survival, which was employed by many artists and evolved into certain rules of inner censorship under Nazi occupation?
Keywords: artists, neo-Classicism, neoTraditionalism, Nazi occupation, inner censorship