Petras Kalpokas (31 March 1880 in Miškinė – 5 December 1945) was a Lithuanian artist and professor.

Biography

Kalpokas was born on 31 March 1880 in the village of Miškinė, near Kvetkai, in the

Kovno Governorate Kovno Governorate ( rus, Ковенская губеpния, r=Kovenskaya guberniya; lt, Kauno gubernija) or Governorate of Kaunas was a governorate ('' guberniya'') of the Russian Empire. Its capital was Kaunas (Kovno in Russian). It was forme ...

of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...

(in the Biržai district of present-day Lithuania). From 1890 to 1895 he attended the Gymnasium of Jelgava, Latvia. He was expelled when he drew a teacher's cartoon on a stove. In 1898 Kalpokas moved to Odessa where he spent two years as an art student. In 1890 (?) he received a bronze medal for his still life painting. In 1892 the first exhibition of Kalpokas' drawings was organized in Riga. Kalpokas continued his studies of arts in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...

. He studied under guidance of Anton Ažbe and

Wilhelm von Debschitz Wilhelm Siegfried Kurt von Debschitz (21 February 1871 – 10 March 1948) was a German painter, interior designer, craftsman, art teacher and founding director of an influential art school in Munich. Early life and education He was born on 2 ...

. Kalpokas attended Heimann Academy and

Munich University The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's sixth-oldest university in continuous operatio ...

. Between 1909 and 1920 Kalpokas traveled around Europe: Switzerland, Hungary, Italy. In 1914 he attempted to organize a large one-man exhibition in Germany, but more than 120 of his paintings were lost due to World War I. After he returned to Lithuania, Kalpokas began teaching. First lecturing at drawing courses, established by Justinas Vienožinskis, he later taught at

Kaunas Art School Kaunas School of Arts ( lt, Kauno meno mokykla) was a public art school, which operated from 1922 to 1940 in Kaunas, Lithuania. At the time, it was the only operating art school in Lithuania. References Arts The arts are a very wide ...

. In 1928 Kalpokas held a large personal exhibition in Kaunas. In 1930 he published a textbook on painting techniques and in 1945 became a professor.

Works

Most of Kalpokas' works are landscapes and portraits, but he experimented with diverse genres (still life, thematic composition, theatrical scenery, monumental painting) and techniques (oil, watercolor, tempera, fresco). Landscapes of Kalpokas are lyric. Some of them are realistic, others have features of

impressionism Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...

. His portraits are psychological and precise, while frescoes - decorative and dynamic. Among noted works by Kalpokas are: * The Golden Birch Tree (1907) * Rivulet in Spring (1907) * Sylvan way (1912) * The landscape of Switzerland (1915) * Wind from the Sea (1942) * Portrait of Jurgis Šlapelis (1924) * Portrait of

Jonas Jablonskis Jonas Jablonskis (; 30 December 1860, in Kubilėliai, Šakiai district – 23 February 1930, in Kaunas) was a distinguished Lithuanian linguist and one of the founders of the standard Lithuanian language. He used the pseudonym ''Rygiškių Jon ...

(1938) * Portrait of Salomeja Neris (1945) * Amasone (1933) * Forest and Cloud (1926)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kalpokas, Petras 1880 births 1945 deaths 20th-century Lithuanian painters Burials at Petrašiūnai Cemetery