Viktoras Petravičius, Poster project

Viktoras Petravičius (1906-1989)
Poster project
7th decade of the 20th century. pop., linocut, 41 × 30
Sign. AD: V. Petravičius

Viktoras Petravičius is considered to be one of the most famous Lithuanian artists of the 20th century. His work is distinguished by a distinctive and original style, which is influenced by Lithuanian folk art and national traditions. From 1926 to 1935, he studied at the Kaunas School of Art and attended the private art studio of M. Dobužinski, and later studied at the National School of Fine Arts in Paris. From 1940 to 1941 he worked as a lecturer at the Kaunas School of Applied Arts, and from 1941 to 1943 he taught at the Vilnius Academy of Arts. In 1944 he left Lithuania for Germany, where he founded a private art studio and an international art academy in Munich. From 1949 he lived in Chicago and worked as a designer in various stained glass studios. His work combines a Lithuanian national worldview with universal themes of human experience. The artist's works are not only decorative, but also convey feelings of exile, loneliness, faith and national identity. Although his work has remained very Lithuanian, his studies in Paris and his life in exile have added modernist ideas to it.