LITUANUS LITHUANIAN QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES   Volume 10, No.3-4 - Fall and Winter 1964 Editor of this issue: Thomas Remeikis ISSN 0024-5089 Copyright © 1964 LITUANUS Foundation, Inc.

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THE ART OF VYTAUTAS   O.   VIRKAU

The work of Vytautas Virkau is an outstanding example of what is often referred to by art critics as the Chicago School. Franz Schultze, art critic of the Chicago Daily News, has written of his work: "For Vytautas Virkau .. . the figure figures not at all. He is a landscapist, moreover of abstract proclivities, and he follows objective nature only up to the point where it collides with his subjective notions about it, whereupon it yields to those notions. Since that point is quickly reached, his work looks rather like the product of the studio than of the outdoors. It is highly formalized and conscientiously planned — the floral or the arboreal motif is more important than the flower or the tree. This makes him sound like an heir of Cezanne, which he is, — to his credit. What he is not (and perhaps no less fortunately) is that breed of action painter who, Rorschach-like "sees" sunsets, rainbows, and wheatfields in the meanderings of his paint and then calls his products "landscapes", ex post facto. Virkau's work is too clean and hard, too legible and intentional for that. Furthermore, he is wise enough to know the value of space in landscape painting, and he articulates this element, especially in his recent pieces, by means of short staccato brush strokes that add up to persuasive value gradations and consequent special recessions. His high-key color, together with the unprepossessing emotional tone of his subject, causes the lightness of mood heretofore mentioned. But lightness can be seriously handled, and therein lies the virtue of Virkau."

Virkau was born in Lithuania in 1930. From 1946 to 1949 he studied in Munich, Germany. Upon his arrival in the United States in 1951, he attended the University of Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he obtained his Master of Fine Arts degree in 1956. At present he is on the art faculty at George Williams College in Chicago.

Vytautas Virkau has participated in many individual and group exhibits. A list of his exhibits follows:

"ROLLING LANDSCAPE" oil 40"x34" 1962
Collection: Mr. and Mrs. Robert Weitze,

"GATES OF LIGHT" oil 48"x46" 1964

"SERPENTINA" oil 48"x46" 1964

"HYDROPHYTIC LANDSCAPE V'oil 48"x46" 1963

"LANDSCAPE FOR A DRAGONFLY" oil 48"x46" 1963
Collection: Mr. and Mrs. A. Kučiūnas