Lietuvių dailės parodos Vokietijoje ir JAV XX a. 5–9 deš.: reprezentacija, integracija, sunykimas

Abstract

The aim of this article is to discuss Lithuanian emigrants’ art exhibitions, the motives for their organisation, their functions and results in order to highlight the relationship of Lithuanian artists with their social and artistic environments in Germany and the United States. The Lithuanian artists who ended up in emigration in the United States after World War II actively organised exhibitions, which received popular positive reviews in the Western press. Archival material, exhibition catalogues and reviews suggest that through these exhibitions, the diaspora sought to represent their country, to become integrated into West European artistic life and to change the authorities’ attitudes towards people from DP camps. During the German period (up to 1950), cultural and national artefacts were used to prove the political and cultural separateness of Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians from the Soviet Union. After migrating to the United States, Lithuanian national culture was treasured and nurtured, however, in subsequent generations it progressively weakened and exhibitions were smaller in scale. Few Lithuanian artists managed to successfully integrate into the American art scene and succeed in the competitive environment. In this article, the author seeks to explain these phenomena, and why American Lithuanian émigrés of the 1980s identified their cultural situation as a “loss in the competitive struggle of cultures”.