Modernizmas Lietuvos bažnytinėje dailėje: Kazio Varnelio (1917-2010) atvejis

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Kazys Varnelis; Biografijos; Dailininkai; Kolekcininkai; Modernizmas; Bažnytinė dailė; Sacral art; Painters; Collectioners; Modernism; Biographies.

ENThe article addresses and explores the relationship between the movement of church art renewal that started in interwar Lithuania and its impact on the work of Lithuanian artists in Western Europe and the USA in the second half of the twentieth century. The rise and significance of art deco and post-Cubist art in general is revealed through a detailed overview of Kazis Varnelis’s early work and its contexts. Commissions for monumental paintings for Catholic churches in Bavaria are interpreted as a confirmation of the timeliness of Varnelis’s work in particular and the Lithuanian art school of the 1940s in general. This is one of the circumstances that justify the success of Kazys Varnelis, Aleksandra Kašubienė, Vytautas Kazimieras Jonynas, and other Lithuanian artists in the milieu of American church art, and in the general art environment in the case of Kazys Varnelis and Aleksandra Kašubienė. The sources, artwork, and insights presented in the article allow for a broader understanding of the significance of the modernisation of Lithuanian church art and link the processes of cultural development in Lithuania with the international context. The study provides arguments for the analysis of a distinctive cultural, religious, and political phenomenon – the Lithuanian chapels at the National Shrine in Washington DC and St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. [From the publication]