Lietuvos dailė vokiečių okupacijos metais (1941– 1944)
Lithuanian art during the German occupation (1941–1944)

Summary/Abstract: The article deals with Lithuanian art and its status during World War II in an attempt to discuss the possibilities of art, artistic life and its main forms. Analysis of art’s structure as a genre and stylistic peculiarities reveals the predominant esthetical attitudes towards it. The summary of the material is followed by a conclusion that German civil authorities deliberately allowed the functioning of some Lithuanian institutions necessary for the continuity of artistic life, and funded them. Under the Nazi occupation in Lithuania there were several functioning art museums and two high art schools. The activity of the Lithuanian Artists’ Association was allowed as well. Two branches of the Association, based in two largest cities of Kaunas and Vilnius, coordinated the artistic activities, organized art exhibitions and provided members of the Association with financial support. Exhibitions and competitions, organized by periodicals, promoted artistic activities and also provided the German authorities with an opportunity of supervising the contents and style of art works. Left-wing artists and the ones of non-Lithuanian origin were excluded from the public artistic life. There were actually no cases of direct persecution of modernists mainly because widespread traditionalism in Lithuanian art of the 1940s was close to the official stylistics of the Third Reich, except the exclusion of Antanas Gudaitis’ paintings from the annual art exhibition in 1944 on the order by Reich Commissar for the Ostland Heinrich Lohse.The article concludes that in the war time artistic conditions in Lithuania were rather minimal. Moreover, Lithuanian artists were not eager to meet the requirements of the German authorities. At the same time, they avoided confrontation to the war time reality in their art and preferred the wait-and-see position.

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