Cultural Nationalism and the Avant-Garde: Teisutis Zikaras in Kaunas, Freiburg, Melbourne

Abstract

Two conflicting forces shaped post-Second World War Lithuanian art in exile: cultural nationalism and School of Paris modernism. Cultural nationalism frames most post-war accounts of senior Lithuanian artists in exile, while younger artists who migrated to Paris or New York are more likely to be co-opted to a Lithuanian diasporic avant-garde. Teisutis Zikaras (1922–1991) felt the pull of both forces. The youngest son of sculptor Juozas Zikaras, he initially adhered to his father’s academicism and nationalist romanticism. At Kaunas Art School, during successive Soviet and German occupations, he studied under Juozas Mikėnas and Vytautas Kašuba and with them retreated to the lyric poetry and ne..