LITUANUS
LITHUANIAN QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
 
Volume 25, No.1 - Spring 1979
Editor of this issue: V. Stanley Vardys
ISSN 0024-5089
Copyright © 1979 LITUANUS Foundation, Inc.
Lituanus

ONE HUNDRED YEARS TO ADOMAS VARNAS

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Lituanus is happy to celebrate the 100th birthday of Adomas J. Varnas, a distinguished Lithuanian artist whose artistic life spans generations of Lithuanian history. Born on January 2, 1879, he held his first one man show in Zakopane (Poland today) in 1908. Seventy years later he is still painting in Chicago, Illinois. His life was much affected by the turbulent history of XX century Lithuania. An exile at 24 he fled the Tsarist rule to escape arrest for taking part in the production of a Lithuanian play he was able to return home only in 1913. After a very active and creative life in independent Lithuania, he again withdrew from his native land like many of his contemporary artists and intellectuals before the return of the second Soviet occupation of Lithuania in 1944. Five years later, in 1949, he settled in Chicago where he produced, among others, some monumental historical paintings (The Coronation of Mindaugas, completed in 1953).

The works of Varnas include paintings, engravings, drawings, design of stamps and currency notes. He is also well known for his portraits and landscape paintings, lithographs, political cartoons, book illustrations. In addition, he was very active in organizing artistic life, schools of art and music, the first Lithuanian state theater and the Čiurlionis art gallery. His name is firmly engraved in the history of Lithuanian art and recognized both in contemporary Lithuania and in Western Lithuanian diasporas.

In Lituanus, the art and contribution of our centenarian has been analyzed by his younger colleague Vytautas K. Jonynas (Vol. V No. 2, June, 1959, pp. 58-62) and by Saulë Jautokas (Vol. 15, No. 1, Spring, 1969, pp. 71-75).

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IN THE WAVES. ADOMAS VARNAS

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VYTAUTAS THE GREAT. ADOMAS VARNAS

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THE CORONATION OF MINDAUGAS. ADOMAS VARNAS