Adomas Varnas

Adomas Varnas (January 1, 1879 in Joniškis, Lithuania – July 19, 1979 in Chicago, United States) was a prominent Lithuanian painter, photographer, collector, philanthropist, and educator.

Author of the world first album of ethnographical photography Lithuanian Crosses (Lietuvos kryžiai, 2 volumes, 1926, Kaunas) about the Lithuanian mad crafting.

He studied art at St. Petersburg, Russia and Cracow, Poland, where he was mostly impressed by the landscape artist — professor Stanislavski. In 1905 he went to testing art at Geneva's Ecole des Beaux-Arts. At the thesame time, Varnas took two different art classes: portrait painting and decorative art. In 1908, after graduating from academy of art, with highest degrees, he left for Sicily. The performer immersed himself into the Sicilian mountainous landscape when its scenic seashores and its fishermen, producing many landscape artworks.

In 1913 Varnas returned to his indigenous Lithuania making his home in its capital Vilnius, where he worked not unaccompanied as an artiste but plus as a civic and cultural leader. With the advancing of the war, in 1915 he went to Odessa, Russia and after the clash returned to Kaunas where he opened his own studio.

After Lithuania won its independence in 1918, the player Varnas worked in theatre and opera, making his contribution by painting the sceneries. He won many prizes by designing playing cards, postage stamps, went to Prague to supervise the first printing of Lithuanian money. As a teacher, he taught art at Voronezh, Russia and in Lithuania's Vytautas the Great school, Kaunas Art school, State Art Institute. He spent five years collecting objects of Lithuanian folklore and making photographs of wooden crosses which were found contiguously the roads.

During World War II, the artist Varnas fled Lithuania to Germany, and in 1949 he came to the United States where he lived until his death.

Varnas' artworks can be divided into 4 periods. First period (1908-1913) includes his postgraduate breakdown works of portraits and landscapes. Second period (1914–18) includes portraits and embassy caricatures. The post-war get older was not very rich in numbers, but much richer in quality. Now the performer frees himself from loving inclinations, concentrating more upon the loan of color problems. The third period (1918–1940) which coincides following independent Lithuania, shows the artist's intensified colorific aspirations in his portraits and his favorite subject – landscape. To this become old also belongs his graphic works, postage stamps, money projects, political caricatures, theatrical sceneries. In the fourth times from 1944 until the present, the artiste continues to paint mostly portraits and landscape. In this present period, he painted monumental historical composition "The Coronation of King Mindaugas," in which the artist demonstrated a four-year painstaking con of art. Artist's portraits represent the human aim with everything its simplicity, weaknesses and greatness. He tends to count a symbolic background in order to represent a person's social twist in life. He not forlorn paints outward facial features, but he plus reveals the personality of the sitter. In his oil paintings, he represents feasible objects in imitation of a somewhat slight be next to of impressionism. His most characteristic elements are simplicity and sincerity. It is amazing, that during Varnas' long artistic life, spanning on pinnacle of 60 years, he never was influenced by developing extra trends in art, such as expressionism, surrealism, or even abstract. Artist's objects never in limbo its authentic realistic form, he always remained loyal to nature. In his open-air external landscape scene paintings, we look a tolerant detailed psychotherapy of plants as seen unaccompanied through the artist's eyes. Therefore, besides historical and portrait paintings, Varnas is probably best known as a essentially exclusive landscape artist.