From Sketch to Painting. 100 Years of Jonas Švažas

The exhibition of painter Jonas Švažas (1925–1976) “From Sketch to Painting,” dedicated to the artist’s centenary, will open to visitors on July 25, 2025 (Friday) in several venues – at 5:30 p.m. in the Exhibition Hall of the Klaipėda Culture Communication Center (Didžioji Vandens St. 2, Klaipėda) and at 6:30 p.m. in the KADS Baroti Gallery (Didžioji Vandens St. 2 / Aukštoji St. 1, Klaipėda).

In this way, the organizers of the exhibition aim not only to highlight the representative side of J. Švažas’s work, better known to art lovers, but also to present more intimate traces of his artistic activity related to his personal life. This intention is reflected in the exhibition’s title – From Sketch to Painting – which points to the dynamics of the artist’s creative process. This is embodied in the physical movement of the viewer: from the drawings and photographs displayed in the gallery, including the Meadow painted during his student years, to the paintings exhibited in the KCCC Exhibition Hall, among them his last completed work, Trees.

Although the artist lived and worked in Vilnius, he was by no means confined to the landscapes of the capital. With few exceptions, Lithuania had no marine painters. Thus, Švažas’s seascapes – sailboats floating on the sea, ship festivals, and industrial port motifs – were among his greatest innovations. This very innovation inspired the curators of his centenary exhibition to organize it in Klaipėda, presenting not only paintings created in the port city but also works depicting water, bridges, bridge supports, and fishermen.

Unlike Romantic marines, where the relationship between water and atmosphere was given symbolic meaning, Švažas treated the sea and water differently. Water in his works is not directly, realistically “portrayed.” While it has reflective qualities, it primarily serves as a coloristic and structural element of pictorial form – an element of conditional color, a rhythm of reflections interacting with sails, masts, crane constructions, bridge supports, or other details of urban and natural landscapes. Bright, intense colors suggesting emotion, together with clear, laconic forms of pictorial detail, create in his paintings both a monumental and, at the same time, a vivid and joyful impression.

Even in the late Soviet era, J. Švažas earned the name of a modernist “classic.” As literary scholar and art historian Irena Kostkevičiūtė put it, through both his social engagement and artistic creation, he legitimized the aesthetics of artistic transformation as a foundation of Lithuanian artistic thought. Visitors to the exhibition are invited to see and experience this foundation, which spurred the constant renewal of Lithuanian painting – the tradition we live with today.

/ Dr. Dalia Karatajienė /