AUDRIUS PUIPA

Painter, graphic artist Audrius Puipa was born in 1960, Vilnius and died in 1997. In 1985 he graduated in graphic studies in the Lithuanian State Institute of Fine Arts. He has been participating in art exhibitions since 1985. After the death of the artist, 7 posthumous personal exhibitions were organized (two of them in Bergen, Norway, and Helsinki).

A. Puipa is an outstanding Lithuanian artist, painter par excellence, an excellent teacher, whose contribution to the art of drawing is not yet properly appreciated. His work shows a rich, rough depiction of life, an interesting interweaving of classicism and modernism. A. Puipa portrayed his artist friends, bohemian representatives, cultural border types – drunkards, graveyard diggers, militiamen, etc. – thus creating a kind of encyclopedia of customs, every day and household life, thoughts and passions, inserting fragments from color magazines, beautifying details or intentionally vulgarizing one or another element: scenes from the life of Vilnius intellectuals (Jacovskiai, Klimai, Kavaliauskai, Leonavičiai, etc.), Lithuanian rural life images (e.g. Šešuolėliai), which in some aspects these are images of the disappearing Lithuanian countryside life (slaughtering a pig, bathing a child or grandfather, etc.). In the works of A. Puipa, there is no lack of comic stories, grotesque, caricatures, subtle irony, nostalgia for the passing time. At first glance, A. Puipa’s works may seem to be just documentary nature filming, but with his work, the author mystified everyday reality. The artist’s works are often directly literary: verbal comments are inserted into the picture. A personal, peculiar method of composition is also used – rhythm of precisely finished areas and only stroked by pencil sketched areas of the picture. The artist worked in various techniques – screen printing, color lithography, watercolors. Pictures directed by A. Puipa with famous artists (Vytautas Kalinauskas, Vytenis Jankūnas, etc.), staging paintings that are recognized around the world (David’s “Death of Marat”etc.) started a new stage in Lithuanian art, where fiction and reality were cleverly combined.