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PETRAS VAITIEKŪNAS
Born in 1953, in Liudvinavas, Marijampole district | Lithuania
Petras Vaitiekūnas - diplomat, former minister of foreign affairs, member of the Supreme Council - Restorative Seimas, signatory, physicist and painter. He became interested in painting while studying physics at Vilnius University, after visiting the exhibition of the painter Algimantas Jonas Kuras. After seeing one of his works, in which the sky, grass, strung objects and a black square between the earth and the sky were present. That square became not only the beginning of acquaintance and interest in painting, but also a part of a personal creative style.
The artist mostly paints landscapes, abstractions and people. Sometimes recognizable, sometimes not. He himself once said: "I like chaos. I want to extract something from the chaos: an unexpected figure, an unexpected combination of colors, an emotion, a feeling, a movement."
"Petras' paintings are real, with a delicate color, with a deep sense of color and composition, both lyrical and dramatic, figurative, mostly portraits - vivid, specific people with appropriate deformation of the drawing, emphasizing the character. Tiny compositions with human relationships are signs of the time when the author painted. The times of despair and resignation, the times of Sąjūdis, smoldered and carried from his childhood, from his parents, from his grandfather, all the way to the great Reform Movement Sąjūdis, which terminated the painting of a doctor of physics, giving rise to the painting of the movement of poetic emotion for himself, to the real art which is created not for exhibitions, not for fame, but out of strange calling which is stimulated by inner processes, deep impressions and convulsion,“ – the artist Alvydas Šaltenis wrote about P. Vaitiekūnas' paintings.