On May 21 – July 20, 2024, an exhibition “Kęstutis Kasparavičius, Creator of Miraculous Stories” will be on display at Vilnius Graphic Art Centre’s Kairė-dešinė gallery. The opening will be held on May 21, 2024, at 6pm.
This retrospective marks the anniversary of Kęstutis Kasparavičius, acting as a congratulation to an inventive and laborious member of the artists’ community. The show could well be titled with a word conceived by the author himself – Kasparatory: it is the artist’s creative territory and laboratory where illustrations and characters inhabiting books and readers’ minds are born. In his work, the artist stays true to one field – book art; he has created illustrations for many children’s literature classics (Bürger, Milašius, Andersen, Hoffmann, Collodi and others), illustrated poetry books, and discovered the nonsensical aesthetic, which would become his trademark feature, while creating illustrations for Edward Lear’s book. Having illustrated books by various authors, Kasparavičius eventually dared to write himself, and currently is the author and illustrator of as many as 20 children’s books. His illustrations are closely related to the text – like a book director and set designer, the author fills them with witty characters and situations. The target audience of his tales includes children and adults equally, while the effect of the books is exceptionally therapeutic and lasting: they have raised several generations of Lithuanian children and fans of his work.
The children’s book illustrator and writer Kęstutis Kasparavičius has created and illustrated 63 books. His books have been translated to more than 20 languages. He finished the M. K. Čiurlionis School of Art in choir conducting in 1972, and graduated from Vilnius Art Institute with a degree in industrial design in 1981. The first book illustrated by him was published in 1984. The year 1990 saw him receive recognition abroad, when he won the Golden Pen award in Belgrade, while in 1993 he was named UNICEF Illustrator of the Year at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair. Kasparavičius’ 1989–2010 illustrations were selected for the Bologna Children’s Book Fair exhibition. He also took part in the Bratislava Illustration Biennial numerous times, and in 2016 held his first exhibition abroad, A Conductor With a Brush, at the Art and History Library in Bologna. The artist was nominated for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award and the Hans Christian Andersen Award several times. In 2010 he received the Jānis Baltvilks Prize, an international children’s literature award for the Baltic Sea countries, in 2019 the Lithuanian Government Art and Culture Award, and in 2020 the Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania.
* There will be meetings with the author and the curator, educational activities for children during the exhibition. The exhibition is part of the “Culture Night” festival program. More information about all events will be published on graphic.lt and VGMC social media accounts.
Curated by Jolita Liškevičienė
Coordinated by Jurga Minčinauskienė
Architecture by MOA Studio
Graphic design by Sigutė Chlebinskaitė
Organised by Vilnius Graphic Art Centre
Exhibition funded by:
LATGA
Lithuanian Council for Culture
Vilnius City Municipality
Partners:
Aukso žuvys publishing house
IBBY Lietuva
Land of Books
Lithuanian Artists’ Association
Lithuanian Culture Institute
Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania
National Gallery of Art of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art
Media partners:
artnews.lt
LRT
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