Žibuntas Mikšys

LTGrafikas, intelektualas, kultūros veikėjas, gerai žinomas Lietuvos išeivių bendruomenėse ir šalies meninėje, akademinėje aplinkoje. 1944-ųjų vasarą jis su tėvais išvyko iš gimtojo Kauno ir po ilgų klajonių abipus Atlanto 1962 m. visam laikui įsikūrė Paryžiuje. Knygoje pristatomi svarbiausi menininko kūrybos laikotarpiai, sritys ir kūriniai - nuo pirmųjų raižinių iki vėlyvųjų koliažų. [knygos.lt]Reikšminiai žodžiai: Mikšys Žibuntas; Grafika; Biografija; Mikšys Žibuntas; Graphics Art; Biography.

ENŽibuntas Mikšys was born on 12 December 1923 in Kaunas. His mother Zuzana Arlauskaitė-Mikšienė (1889-1973), an actress and stage director, decided to educate her son in Erhard Janssen's German elementary school. Mikšys received his initial training in art from Kaunas Jesuit Gymnasium, where he attended classes of drawing run by the sculptor Alfonsas Janulis (1909-2008). In the late 1930s, he started making linocuts that brought him close to the Expressionist Brücke group artists. Mikšys' prints from German-occupation years capture the atrocities of war, funerals and mass graves. There are also other works from the same period based on the Bible stories and opera characters. Despite disturbing times, Mikšys started his studies at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas and expected to enrol for a course at the Decorative Art Institute in the autumn of 1944. It was already on July 8 of 1944 that their family had to flee Kaunas. Mikšys' first stop was in Vienna, but as the Soviet Army approached Austria, he fled, in February 1945, to Passau in Germany. After the war ended, he settled in a displaced persons camp in Ingolstadt. In the spring of 1946, he started his studies at Nuremberg Art Academy based in Ellingen town, but left the same autumn for Stuttgart, where he studied for three years at the Art Academy and took a course in theatre direction from the Kunibert Gensichen Drama School. After completion of his studies, in the autumn of 1949 he sailed to America. Upon arrival in the USA, he stayed in Detroit, moved to Chicago in 1951, and in 1953, to New York City, where he was employed by a stained glass workshop. Though in October 1955 he was granted a US citizenship, he sailed back to Europe. He lived in Paris and Stuttgart, worked for a while with different theatre companies in Basel and Munich, and sailed back to New York in the autumn of 1959.He took a job with the stained glass workshops once again, and after earning sufficient money, came back to Europe to settle in Paris in January of 1962 for the rest of his life. During his period of crossing the Atlantic back and forth, Mikšys continued creating linocuts, working on large scale, quite frequently filling up the entire plane with tightly packed letter rows. Most of his inspiration came from poetry and theatre. He made his first prints composed solely of lettering in 1948 in Stuttgart. These were Cordoba Distant and Lonely, a poem in German by Federico Garsia Lorca (1888-1936) and Overthe Dunes of Rags, a poem by his gymnasium friend Leonas Lėtas (1923-1998). A series of twenty linocuts to the fairytale The Girl Who Could Not Dance by ThomasTheodor Heine executed in Detroit in 1951 appears one of the most beautiful early works from Mikšys. In 1955, he made the linocuts of the Pirate Jenny am from Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera (1928). It was his last work in New York City before sailing back to Europe. The title page shows distant sea waters opening up between the letters; the wall of "syllable bricks" arranged into four stanzas leaves no doubt in the power of writing, while the sails and guns emerging among the letters seem to hint at the dreams coming true. During his second sojourn in New York City, Mikšys created his largest scale artwork, based on the Lithuanian folk song A Hawk Flew By and François Villon's Ballad of the Ladies of Bygone Times.After settling in Paris he produced several other linocuts of smaller scale, Killing Harmlessly, a poem by the German writer Heinz Pionteko (1925-2003), How Light Will be Earth, a poem by Nelly Sachs (1891-1970), and the Lithuanian folk song For the Sake of Homecoming. In creating his "lettered graphic prints", the artist sought to show poetry "as it is" and to "approach letters, words and sentences as creative matter of visual art". Central to Mikšys' oeuvre is the creation of the characters of Georg Biichner's comedy Leonce and Lena. He dedicated tens years for the work. From 1952 to 1953 while in Chicago, he produced a series of lithographs, and from 1964 to 1973 in Paris, a series of etchings. The artist was fascinated with the comedy and the author who died young, was a political refugee and contributed to the development of democracy in Germany, managing to write quite a few works over his short life. When in 1962 Mikšys settled in Paris, the town of "the best theatre in the world", he went to see plays several days a week, he watched movies the remaining nights and spent what remained of his time in the library. He worked for the German History Institute, from 1979 through 1985, taught the Lithuanian language at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations. Linder the penname of Jean-Pierre Menthanon he wrote a book Lithuania, a Country Between Two Worlds, published in 1982 by the Lithuanian community in France. He started chairing the Lithuanian community in 1999. Over his life, the artist met nearly all people of culture and science arriving in Paris, was engaged in intense correspondence with Lithuanian artists and intellectuals. The first Lithuanian exhibit of Mikšys' work was held in Lithuania in 1974, preceded by his shows in Stuttgart and New York City in 1965, Detroit and Giessen in 1966, Chicago and Toronto in 1967, and Urbino in 1971. [...]. [From the publication]