Vytautas Kasiulis Museum of Art of the LNMA presents the artwork by Lithuanian-Australian painter Jurgis Miksevicius
Exhibition opening on Thursday, 7 November at 6 pm, 2024
Vytautas Kasiulis Museum of Art of the LNMA opens a retrospective exhibition The Worlds of Jurgis Miksevicius. It is the first in Lithuania comprehensive presentation of the artwork by Jurgis Miksevicius (1923–2014). It is curated by Ilona Mažeikienė, director of Vytautas Kasiulis Museum of Art of the LNMA, Regina Urbonienė, Head of the Fine Arts Department, and the artist’s daughter Carolyn Leigh. On display are the works by the painter gifted to Lithuania by the painter’s family. The exhibition will be on through 28 March, 2025.
“The Lithuanian National Museum of Art puts sustained effort to bring back to Lithuania the art of the famed Lithuanian émigré artists, presenting them to the public at impressive exhibitions. Thanks to consistent work of the Museum’s curators and our partners, such names as Aleksandra Kasuba, Pranas Domšaitis, Eva Kubba, Žibuntas Mikšys, Antanas Mončys, as well as the renowned Litvak artists, have already received a place of significance in the history of Lithuanian art, when we have learned more of the life and art of the Lithuanian emigrees. This autumn it is time for a deeper encounter with the talent of Jurgis Miksevicius who created art in Australia. We owe this opportunity to the generous Miksevicius family,” Dr Arūnas Gelūnas, director general of the Lithuanian Museum of Art says.
The oeuvre of the artist evokes the experience of war, celebrates Australian landscape, and explores the theme of the sacred
“My paintings are the sum of my life, events are secondary to it. If I have anything to say it can only be said in paintings and words can only be a paler reflection of it,” the artist said.
The legacy of the artist who spoke in paintings is composed of a diversity of genre: landscapes, portraits, still-life, abstracts, and drawings. The exhibition curators see the intense emotional states in Miksevicius’s paintings as kindred with German Expressionism, while his explorations for new colour harmonies and his modernist expression bring him together with Paul Klee’s abstractions and avant-garde experiments, and finally, his meditative moods link him to the practice of Indian mysticism. The multifaceted art by the painter weaves together the theme of painful experiences of Europe engulfed by the war, the artist’s fascination with Australian landscape, his warmth and empathy to other humans, and the dimension of the sacred.
The past decade saw the creative phenomenon of Miksevicius broadly illuminated in Australia by his solo exhibitions in Leura, Manly, Bathurst. According to the famous Australian art critic Roger Butler, we often attempt to sum up an artist and to grasp their role on the broader field of the history of art only posthumously. Though belated, according to the critic, this recognition is greatly consequential, and the celebration of Jurgis Miksevicius, the quiet and insatiable art practitioner, is no exception.
Buddhism-practicing Lithuanian painter of the Bauhaus formation
Jurgis Miksevicius was born on 8 March 1923 in Šiauliai, in the family of construction engineer Medardas Leonas Mikševičius and doctor-paediatrician Elena Čechirovaitė. In 1940, he graduated from the Aušra boys’ gymnasium in Kaunas. Following the retreat of his family from Lithuania in 1944, he completed high school in Berlin. From 1946, Jurgis Miksevicius studied architecture at the University of Technology in Darmstadt, where he also attended Prof. Paul Thesing’s studio and learned the theory of colour, the foundations of abstract, and design. The students followed a curriculum that applied the Bauhaus principles. It was during his studies in Germany, the exhibition curators note, that Miksevicius came of age as an artist with his own aesthetic values and artistic tastes.
In 1948, he emigrated to Australia, where he initially worked at the Bathurst (New South Wales) migrant camp, later was employed in construction works in the capital city. In a year’s time he became the first Lithuanian member of Artists’ Society of Canberra. In 1953, the artist moved to Sydney where he participated in the activities of the Contemporary Art Association and was one of the founders of Six Directions, the artist group of the Baltic countries. Together with Algirdas Šimkūnas, Henrikas Šalkauskas, and other Lithuanian artists, he organized exhibitions. He worked as an art teacher. From his student years, Miksevicius was interested in the religious and philosophical Hindu texts and the art of India. He travelled India many times, and became a practicing Buddhism. Around 1978, Jurgis Miksevicius withdrew from public artistic life, but never stopped producing art. He painted till his last days. The artist died at home in Bensville in 2014, and his ashes are scattered in the vicinities of his home.
A collection of the artist’s works gifted to Lithuania
Willing to preserve and to publicise the art by the unique Lithuanian-Australian artist, Miksevicius’s family formed a collection of his pieces inclusive of 77 art pieces and a part of his personal archive, which in 2023 they gifted to Lithuania. This collaboration project of international significance was successfully delivered with the help of Lithuanian Council for Culture and the LNMA’s long-year partners: the Lithuanian World Community, the Australian Lithuanian Community, and private supporters.
The gift was a significant expansion of the collection by the Australian Lithuanian artist held by the LNMA. His first pieces reached Lithuania back in 1994 among the artwork donated to the LNMA by the Museum’s well-known patron Dr Genovaitė Kazokas. In 1912, the artists’ daughters Helena Miksevicius and Carolyn Leigh handed over four other works to the collections of the then Lithuanian Art Museum. Seven years ago, the painter’s daughters organized an event at Vytautas Kasiulis Museum of Art of the LNMA, where they presented the artist’s life story alongside with a small-scale exhibit.
A retrospective The Worlds of Jurgis Miksevicius includes the pieces by the painter in the LNMA collection and three works held by M.K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art.
The exhibition will be accompanied by an educational programme and a guided walk of the exhibition, at 5 pm 8 November provided by the guardian and curator of the artist’s legacy, and exhibition curator Carolyn Leigh.
Exhibition curators and coordinators: Ilona Mažeikienė, Regina Urbonienė, Carolyn Leigh.
Exhibition designer Rūta Mozūraitė
Exhibition architect Austė Kuliešiūtė-Šemetė
Exhibition organized by Vytautas Kasiulis Museum of Art of the LNMA
Partners: M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, Australian Lithuanian Community, Lithuanian World Community
Supporters: Australian Lithuanian Foundation, UAB Metida
1 Goštauto st, Vilnius, Lithuania
+370 5 261 6764.
kasiulio.muziejus@lndm.lt
