On 9 October 2020, the newly renovated Radvila Palace Museum of Art will reopen with an exhibition Protest Art: The Rebels of the Soviet Era, presenting a part of a wide collection gifted to the museum by Vladimir Tarasov.
According to the Curator and the Director of the museum Dr Arūnas Gelūnas, all the artworks presented in the exhibition became the property of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art on 6 January 2020, when the world-famous jazz musician and artist Vladimir Tarasov donated his five-decades-worth of collection. The exhibition presents the works of forty artists who worked under the conditions of ideological dictate, censorship and restricted freedom of movement during the 1960s and 1980s in the Soviet Union. The creative works of the Moscow Conceptualists and the Lithuanian Silent Modernists are central to this collection. As different as they are in terms of artistic expression, they all share a common quality: defiance towards the prevalent ideological and aesthetic attitudes of their time and a strive for creative freedom. At the same time, this serves as one of the few attempts to present well-known Lithuanian Silent Modernists, such as Valentinas Antanavičius, Eugenijus Antanas Cukermanas, Linas Leonas Katinas, Vincas Kisarauskas, Algimantas Jonas Kuras, Marija Teresė Rožanskaitė, Arvydas Šaltenis and others, alongside their ‘brothers-in-arms’ who are lesser-known in Lithuania – creators of Soviet-era unofficial art from Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, and Estonia among which are the famous Moscow conceptualists – Ilya Kabakov, Erik Bulatov, Yuri Sobolev, Eduard Gorokhovsky, and others
‘In the 1960s, western youths were rebelling against the stiff authoritarian views of their parents who had been shaped by the war, while Soviet youths were furthermore hampered by the regime, which left them with no freedom for self-expression or novel movements. Those who could not stand these restrictions began spontaneously joining into groups and holding meetings. They would gather in artist studios at night to share their hatred for the regime and their hope of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. During such evenings, they would discuss the latest artworks, read poems and listen to music. There would be no particular programme for the evening, allowing creativity to emerge sometimes through the simplest of means. On these nights, Vladimir Tarasov, a talented percussionist, would sometimes show off his abilities by playing on boxes or other items, which were at hand.
It was in this context that Vladimir Tarasov became good friends with the so-called unofficial or non-conformist painters, in particular with Ilya Kabakov’, Art Critic and Curator Jean-Hubert Martin. ‘Now, almost thirty years on, I went back to my storage space and saw a wonderfully expansive museum collection comprising works by artists from Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine and other countries I had toured. Examining everything closely – my whole archive of artists’ works, underground publications and photographs – I realized that my entire collection had become history marked by the Zeitgeist of the second half of the 20th century. Later on, this group of artists became known as the non-conformists. History has shown that art will not stand for compromise. Each of these artists had found their own way and their own language and had become an organic part of art history. All of the works I accumulated had been given to me as gifts, sincerely and with love. I am happy to have known these artists.’
Jazz Musician and Artist Vladimir Tarasov
The complete collection consists of 486 artifacts: paintings, sculptures, photographs, graphic art works, drawings, published works. Geographically, the majority of collection consists of works by artists who at the time were located in the USSR (Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, etc), whilst the rest of the collection derives from France, Germany, USA, and other countries.
Exhibition will be open to visitors from 9 October 2020.
Current safety regulations require the visitors to wear face masks and maintaining social distance of at least 1 m.
Curator Dr Arūnas Gelūnas
Coordinator Justina Augustytė
Architects Petras Išora, Ona Lozuraitytė
Designer Vytautas Volbekas
Organiser The Lithuanian National Museum of Art
