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ÐARÛNAS SAUKA
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paintings invite us into the hidden world
of the subconscious, to the intricate labyrinths
of the kingdom of the dead, and
show the abysses of Dante’s hell.
On the other hand, Sauka’s art successfully
takes its own place in the context
of postmodern art. It is full of the
historiosophic anticipations of global
catastrophe, of the tragic weltanschauung,
of disillusion in the ideals of Western
humanist civilization, of a pessimistic
mood of human solitude and estrangement.
It seems that he is the only
Lithuanian painter who approaches so
closely the tragic, surrealistic attitude of
the existentialist philosophers, Kafka
and Soutine. His works are dominated
by the motifs of solitude, and a longing
for the lost paradise.
Finally, Sauka is a unique artist of an
introverted outsider’s kind, confined in
the world of his own subconscious archetypal
visions, separated from the
vulgar day-to-day life, in which he lives
alone and fathoms the depths of his
own subconscious. The artist creates his
own world, which is in conflict with the
Ðarûnas Sauka. Keturpësèias. 1988. Drobë, aliejus. 65 × 75
LOGOS 34
2003 LIEPA • RUGSËJIS
classical aesthetic and ethical tradition.
It rejects many fundamental ideals and
values of Western artistic culture. Here,
beauty is no longer opposed to ugliness.
Here reigns an atmosphere of total pessimism,
estrangement, and disillusion in
classical aesthetics, ethics and ideas of
beauty. Works by the artist are full of
grotesque, ironic allusions to the favourite
topics and motifs of the great artists
of the past. They appear as debris
of the past in the system of apocalyptic
visions.
In pictures by Sauka elements of reality
are strangely interrelated with
phantasmagoric unreal symbols. That
interrelation creates a magical effect.
The subtle painting techniques, borrowed
from the Old Masters of the past,
the various ways of composition, the
masterful manipulation of bright and restrained
colours and halftones are fascinating.
In his paintings, colours express
sensitively the shifts in the subconscious
and show naturalistically the
materiality of the human body and of
other details.
Prof. Antanas Andrijauskas