NEŽINOMŲ PRANO DOMŠAIČIO KŪRINIŲ PAIEŠKOS.

IN SEARCH FOR UNKNOWN WORKS OF PRANAS DOMŠAITIS.

The permanent exhibition of Klaipėda Gallery of the Lithuanian Art Museum features work of the famous Expressionist painter Pranas Domšaitis (1880-1965). From 1989 through 2001, The Lithuanian Foundation of Chicago (Chicago, Il, USA) donated to Lithuania and handed over to the Lithuanian Art Museum a collection of 530 works of Domšaitis. In the beginning of 2007, the Lithuanian Foundation donated additional 135 works. To date, the LA M has in its possession the bulk of the collection, in total 665 works, purchased from the painter's widow in 1980 by the Lithuanian Foundation. Meanwhile the process of identifying unknown works of Domšaitis in the possession of state museums abroad, private galleries and individuals is ongoing. The article is limited to several aspects of this work, such as the issues of dating the work, the artist's inter-war contacts in Germany and the proliferation of his works on the basis of these contacts. The painter signed all works by his full name or monogram, yet he dated them only prior to his studies at Königsberg Art Academy, that is prior to 1907. The creation year of some of his works can be only established by the dates when they were exhibited or reproduced in catalogues, printed in press or other subsidiary information. The problem of dating is illustrated using the example of his three landscapes with the motif of birch trees. One of them is exhibited at Domšaitis Gallery of the Lithuanian Art Museum, the other two were discovered by the author of the article, in 2006, in Austria, in the Land of Vorarlberg, in the villages of Sulz and Röthis, where the artist lived in the 1930s -1940s. Recently Germany experienced a growing interest in the collections of Jewish collectors destroyed or scattered during the years of the Third Reich, and the problem of restitution. The article further discusses the collections of Siegfried Feldberg and Robert Graetz - these included also works of Domšaitis. In 1976, the collection of Feldberg was acquired by the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin's Land museum. Through correspondence with the Berlinische Galerie, this museum has been discovered to hold three works of Domšaitis. The Graetz collection, disintegrated after the 1933, also included a still-life of Domšaitis. The Feldberg and the Graetz collections were only two of multiple collections of modern German art. The presence of Domšaitis' works in these collections illustrates his weight and popularity in Berlin's artistic life in the 1930s - 1940s. The discoveries of these recent years identified four national museums in possession of the work the artist: alongside with the previously known Berlin's National Gallery, Lüneburg East Prussian Land Museum, Art Forum East German Gallery in Regensburg, the Berlinische Gallery - the Berlin Land Museum is now included. Additional works of Domšaitis have been added to those known to survive in Austria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Straipsnyje aptariami kai kurie nežinomų tapytojo ekspresionisto Prano Domšaičio (1880-1965) kūrinių paieškos aspektai, atskleidžiantys aktualius dailininko kūrinių datavimo ir jų sklaidos tarpukario Vokietijoje klausimus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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