Experience

Pranas Gailius, or “Pränas” (b.1928) encountered, crossed and transformed frontiers of various natures throughout his life. Born in the Lowlands (Samogitia) of Lithuania, after the Soviet occupation he escaped from the homeland into Western Europe and the popular destination of many modernist artists, France. In his own words, “what I have carried with me from Samogitia, is always with me. Later, my eyes were brought up by French art, architecture, music, but no one can change the source!”

Gailius started his artistic path with studies of painting in Strasbourg’s l’École des Arts Decoratifs and continued studying in the Academie Fernand Léger, the studio of the famous artist in Monmartre, Paris (1950). In Gailius’s own words, Léger’s studio greatly contributed to his development as an independently thinking artist, even though he also briefly studied lithography at l’École National Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (1953).

 Gailius’s first exhibition at Galerie du Haute-Pavé in Paris (1955) was the launch of his long term dedication to exploring and powerfully releasing the energy of form, colour and letter. Since then Gailius has regularly exhibited his work in France, Germany, Japan, USA, Switzerland, Lithuania and other countries. Forty years ago his graphic art travelled to Sweden, being shown in Gothenburg (1967). Three of his prints were acquired for the collection of the National Library of France.

At the early stage, Gailius experienced the influence of Tachisme, but his later work was closer to abstract expressionism. As noted by critics, he never attempted to copy either the style of Léger or the abstract expressionists, but experimented and searched for an original mode of expression. The notions of dynamism, vitality and nature were most salient in Gailius’s effort to establish a dialogue between painting, sculpture and graphic art. As he put it, “the nature of my work is between calligraphy and gesture painting. It is based on ideograms, expression of which is enabled by the abstraction.”

The series of etchings Intra Muros (1965) express clearly Gailius’s concern with dynamism, especially as they concentrate and risk exploding the narrow frame of a print. Gailius’s experimentation with colour, especially his efforts to release colour’s power through its purity is revealed in his Inca-Bloc wood carvings (1972). These aspects were further developed during the following decade that saw the birth of Expression Obliterée (1980), which combined abstract expression with realist representation.

Since 1968, Gailius has created several artistic books, otherwise known in French as “livres d’artiste”. Amongst his greatest works is D’ un bel Orient (1981), Gérard Willemetz’s translation of Rubáiyát, the famous poem of Persian mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyam (1048-1123). Another artistic book featured in the exhibition is Le Psaume 91 de David (1991) that inspired an entire series of paintings continuing up to 2004. Le Psaume 91, together with the other exhibited works, powerfully reveals Gailius’s impressive skill in transgressing the limits of a line, a word and a colour and transforming all of them into a new world of experience and game.

Or, in the words of the artist, “What do the letters do in my eyes while I am reading? I think that I see them differently from a reader who is not an artist. In my eyes they immediately start dancing, the linear structure and hierarchy disappear. And it is seen from my books that I behave very freely and cheerfully with letters – sometimes I pat, caress them, sometimes put them aside, temporarily forgotten.”

Or again:

“I like the letters more than words. The artist’s hand can liberate the lines that live in the words and their energy becomes an ideogram.”

Liana Ruokyte-Jonsson (Stockholm) and Valdas Papievis (Paris)