Self-taught artist, poet, kanklī player, organist, poet.
Jonas Gregoravičius was born on November 17, 1914 in the village of Padvengliškės, Sasnava rural municipality, Marijampolė county. His mother was a housewife, and his father worked as an organist, in his free time he drew, carved sculptures, and built crosses. From his father, Jonas inherited a passion for art and creativity. He studied with a director, and as an adult, he attended elementary school in Sasnava, later at Marijonai gymnasium in Marijampolė. In his youth, he played the kanklī, performed at youth parties. He worked as an assistant decorating various Lithuanian churches, and later became a contractor himself and organized church renovations.
In 1935–1944, while working on various decorating and repair works in churches, J. Gregoravičius drew rosettes, vignettes, and various metal crosses of churches, bell towers, and cemeteries in his free time in a notebook, carefully writing down who was drawing what and where.
In 1944, while hiding from service in the Soviet army, he wrote several excellent poems and painted a series of works called “Sounds of the Octave of Music”. Seeing how the Soviet occupation was destroying people and culture, he was so scared that he neither painted, carved sculptures, nor wrote poems, but, according to him: “I did not join the collective farm, I separated from communism and went to church, closer to God – to play the organ.” He played the organ in various Lithuanian churches for 35 years, nineteen of them in the Merkinė Church. Having crossed the threshold of 60 years, he began to draw again. Over a couple of decades, he painted more than 200 religious and several “secular” paintings on pressed cardboard panels. He carved sculptures of the Holy Virgin Mary and the Heart of St. Jesus from pine. For the uniqueness of his works of art and the fostering of national traditions, in 1999 Jonas Gregoravičius was awarded the “Silver Bee” of the District Culture and Art Council, and in 2002 his work was included in the Register of Cultural Values.
J. Gregoravičius died in 2008 and was buried in Merkinė. Part of J. Gregoravičius’s work – drawings, paintings, collections of pebbles – is preserved in the Merkinė Visitor Center of the Dzūkija National Park.
