Šarūnas Sauka

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Šarūnas Sauka (born 1958 in Vilnius, Lithuania) is a postmodern Lithuanian painter. His father is an eminent Lithuanian philologist Donatas Sauka.

In 1976-1983 Šarūnas Sauka studied at the National Institute of Lithuania, Vilnius Art Academy. In 1989, artist was nominated for Lithuania National Award for diptych "Žalgirio mūšis" (English: Battle of Grunwald). Sauka now lives in Dusetos, a small and remote village among numerous lakes and forests.

The artist believes that human spirit must be stripped from conventional chains so as to be able to contemplate the real condition of our body and soul when the beautiful veil is stripped off. In order to comprehend Sauka's creative work, one must take into account not only the extent and cruelty of the communist terror in Lithuania and other countries of Eastern Europe, but also, and first of all, allow for some underlying metaphysical and archetypal ideas that are basic to his world view and sensitivity.^[1]

Šarūnas Sauka is considered as one of the most famous postmodernism painter in Lithuania. His work is often referred to as "different", as well as posmodernism itself. However, that "difference" in Sauka's paintings is quite steady, because he usually uses his own face, sometimes faces of his family members or relatives. There are many paintings where the victim and aggressor both have the same face.^[2]

"The scope of Sauka's imagination includes various manifestations of corruption, rotting, and deterioration, usually connected with human corporeality understood as the antithesis to the Christian ideal of redemption and that of corporeal resurrection. Here we meet horror - struck Gnoticism mixed with Postmodern irony. The artist's world is not a theophany, but a place of Gnostic terror, abandonment and submission to malign forces. However, the labyrinth of material darkness is also a vessel where alchemical work can be done, while supported by the creative imagination. Hence, pathology is inherently mythologized, just as all mythology is pathologized. Sauka stands against both the dematerialization and the spiritualization of reality. He partly follows the tradition of classical European painting, especially as regards various techniques and principles of expression, though creating quite a different context where any traces of Aristotelian logic vanish and the forces of evil become permanent and irrefutable. In a sense, Sauka not only symbolizes the gloomy end of Cristian civilization and its methaphysics, but also reveals the foolish face of the 20th century, which appears when the masks of rationality and seeming wisdom are stripped away."^[1] (Algis Uždavinys, Dr. of Philosophy)

[edit] References

1. ^ ^{a b} Rimantas Dichavičius, Šarūnas Sauka: [album]. Galerija Maldis, 2001. ISBN 9955-9407-0-0
2. ^ Alfonsas Andriuškevičius et al., Šarūno Saukos postmodernizmas, Meno Lietuva (Art Lithuania), Skaitmeninio Vaizdo Ložė. Accessed August 13, 2006.

[edit] See also

• List of Lithuanian artists