How can we present folk art to see its beauty in today's postmodern world? Would it be possible to see the traditional bedspread as a work of art? What would we see in it? What would we read in centuries-old writings about our roots? What would we discover about the Lithuanian aesthetic sense?

In the exhibition "Ethnographic Op Art in Museum Collections" at the Lithuanian National Museum, we are trying to find the answers to these questions.

"The objects that come to the museum come out of their own context, and we can look at them from many different angles. So the idea was to show ethnographic textiles simply as a work of art, like a tapestry, without dividing them into regions, with an emphasis on patterns that have the illusions of op art," says Živilė Paipulaitė, the author of the idea for the exhibition, who works in the Ethnic Culture and Anthropology Collections Department of the National Museum.

The exhibition presents nine paintings by Kazis Varnelis (1917-2010), the most famous Lithuanian master of optical art, and almost sixty fabrics from the collections of the Panevėžys Regional History Museum and the National Museum, including bedspreads, kapas, gauzes, divons, etc. The geometric abstract compositions of the late modernist artist are juxtaposed with the centuries-old authentic textile tradition of optical patterns.

The artist Kazys Varnelis was born in Alsėdžiai in the family of the god-worker and painter Kazimieras Varnelis and the weaver Teofīla Domarkaitė-Varnelienė. The influence of folk art, which he experienced in his childhood and later on, was deeply imprinted in the future artist's consciousness and became a strong basis for his further modern creativity. While living in Chicago, he began to paint geometric motifs, which were indirectly related to the patterns of folk art ornaments: crosses, circles, squares. He used them in his work as symmetrically repeating elements of form, creating a kind of musical rhythm on his canvases.

The rhythmic repetition of ornament symbolises the rhythm of life. K. Varnelis said: "I feel that our whole life is pulsating with rhythm, rhythm plays an important role in our existence. In other words, rhythm is a part of our life and it has been used throughout time in various art forms and styles." Art historian Žydrūnas Mirinavičius says that the ornaments in Varnelis' paintings are repeated like verses of folk songs, that the constant walking in repeating circles is like a magical ritual, like a pagan incantation, like a rosary prayer (Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis, 2007).

Rhythmically repeating patterns are also found in folk textiles. By combining bright contrasting colours, repeating geometric structural elements - circles, squares, curved lines, stars - weavers create semantic structures of signs, which in a distinctive way reveal the legacy of the Baltic culture and the Lithuanian spirit. Rural weavers did not consider themselves artists, but many of them were great connoisseurs of their craft, passing on the secrets of their craftsmanship from generation to generation. "I feel close to those anonymous artists who have repeated the same ornaments thousands of times over the centuries", said K. Varnelis (Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis, 2007).

The exhibition presents a century of tradition - fabrics from the second half of the 19th century to the second half of the 20th century, mostly woven in a dimple weave, but also featuring bedspreads woven in a twill, a figure twill or a combination weave.

We invite you to take a look at the pulsating rhythm of the patterns and discover the vitality of folk textiles and the links with professional contemporary art.

The exhibition will be accompanied by lectures, educational programmes and excursions.

SPEECHES

November 16 at 12 noon

Kazys VARNELIS AND THE LITHUANIAN OPARTY. Prof. dr. Ramutė Rachlevičiūtė, Vilnius Academy of Arts (VDA);

November 23, 12 pm

TRADITIONAL INTERIOR TEXTILE COLLECTIONS AT THE LITHUANIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM AND THE PANEVĖŽIS CRAFT MUSEUM. Senior Museum Curator Živilė Paipulaitė, Lithuanian National Museum (LNM) and Senior Museum Curator Vitalija Vasiliauskaitė, Panevėžys Museum of Regional History (PKM);

November 30, 12 pm

MONTHLY TEXTILE IN THIS CULTURAL ART. TRADITIONS AND TRANSFORMATIONS. Doc. dr. Laura Pavilionytė-Ežerskienė (VDA).