A Century of professional Lithuanian glass art

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Stiklo menas; Lietuvos stiklo menininkai; Stiklo plastika; Glass art; Lithuanian glass artists; Decorative glass.

ENUnfavourable cultural situation in Lithuania conditioned an overdue beginning of the artistic glass development. The first half of the 20th century was marked by the formation of conditions for the glass plastic development. The first condition is associated with the education of fine arts: stained glass specialists started to be educated in Kaunas Art School and later in State Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts. Studying according to the study programme prepared by the professor S. Ušinskas, they acquired broader knowledge of glass art possibilities and techniques. The second condition is associated with the utilitarian and decorative glass brought to Lithuania from abroad in the first half of the 20th century. At the time, glass art was determined by art nouveau and art deco stylistics. The museum collections of the time showed that even though glass brought to Lithuania at the time was not created by the most prominent artists, the artworks reflected modem fine arts trends and, thus, could influence the variety of mass-production glass artworks and partly their artistic image in Lithuania. The period of the 1960s and 1970s can be considered as the first more significant stage in the glass art development in Lithuania. At the time, the first professional glass artists who started the tradition of decorative glass vessels were S. Ušinskas, F. Ušinskaitė, and V. Blažytė. Their glass plastic artworks was determined by the decor characteristic of two trends. The first stylistic trend continued in the tradition of modern treatment of forms taken from the pre-war times. The decor of vases representing the other stylistic trend reflected orientation towards the topics and portrayal principles advocated by social realism. Such ambivalence showed conciliation to the ideological situation; on the other hand, it also demonstrated more liberal position of applied arts in the epoch of socialism.Lithuanian glass during the 1970s and 1980s was conditioned by a broad variety of types and inclination towards the decorativeness and utilitarianism. Monumental spatial glass compositions were extremely popular; they were employed as a sculptural decor of interiors, chandeliers, or exterior objects (artworks created by A. Stoškus, I. Lipienė, A. Dovydėnas, K. Šatūnas and others). Their artistic image also reflected two stylistic tendencies adopted from foreign applied arts. The first - plastic, "organic" - trend stimulated dominance of free, bent, natural glass forms. The other - functionalist - trend substantiated more rational, laconic nature of monumental glass artworks (especially chandeliers). These stylistic tendencies were reflected in the artistic image of decorative vessels created in abundance by glass artists; it was mostly influenced by associative natural forms and colouristic painterly concept of glass plastic (as reflected in the artworks of G. Didžiūnaitytė, A. Žilys, R. Balsys and others). During the discussed period, the positions of abstraction were strengthened in glass plastic art. The changes in the artistic decisions of Lithuanian glass plastic art during the 1970s and 1980s were closely related to the establishment of a Lithuanian academic school of glass: in 1979, a specialty in glass art was established in Lithuanian State Institute of Fine Arts Kaunas Department of Applied Arts. The study programme oriented to the contemporary art processes was gradually prepared on the basis of which a new generation of artists was educated markedly broadening the concept of glass art. The new tendencies and directions crystallised in Lithuanian applied arts in the 1980s and 1990s also affected the artistic image of glass plastic. Thanks to the artists of the younger generation, glass was approaching figurative arts.The process was also stimulated by undoubted effects of the western glass consolidating the prevalence of sculptural attitudes in Lithuanian glass (as reflected in the artworks of R. Kriukas, V. Paulauskas, A. A. Daugėla, J. E. Kaubrys and others). The influence of Finnish, Czech, and Slovakian glass schools on Lithuanian glass art of the 1980s determined the dominance of geometric sculptural glass artworks. In the mid-1990s, Lithuanian glass artists got interested in more complicated sculptural expression means of realistic forms. Modernistic human figure interpretations and expressions of personal experiences were most often taken as the formal and thematic basis of artworks. The artistic expression of glass of the 20lh century always reflected the principle of a unique, authorial artwork which originated in the "Arts and Crafts" movement, art nouveau and art deco trends as well as in the activity of modernist artists. However, the key accelerator of the glass development stimulating individual work of artists was the studio glass movement based on the creation in small private workshops. [...]. [Extract, p. 150-152]