Šarūnas Sauka

Šarūnas Sauka
Stairs (1989) by Šarūnas Sauka
Inferno (1991-1992) by Šarūnas Sauka

Šarūnas Sauka (born 1958 in Vilnius, Lithuania) is a postmodern painter. His father is an eminent Lithuanian philologist Donatas Sauka. In 1989 he was awarded Lithuanian National Prize.

From 1976 to 1983, Šarūnas Sauka studied at the National Institute of Lithuania, Vilnius Art Academy. In 1989, the artist was nominated for the 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.

Sauka believes that the human spirit must be stripped from conventional chains in order to contemplate the true condition of its body and soul. A full appreciation of his artwork requires an understanding of the extent and cruelty of the communist terror in Lithuania and other countries of Eastern Europe and a grasp of some of the underlying metaphysical and archetypal ideas that are basic to his world view and sensibility.[1]

Šarūnas Sauka is considered to be one of the most significant postmodernist painters in Lithuania. His work is often referred to as "different". However, the "difference" in Sauka's paintings is quite consistent, because he usually uses his own face, sometimes faces of his family members or relatives. In many of his paintings, 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 Christian civilization and its methphysics [sic?], 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)

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 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.

See also