Adomas Galdikas

(1893 - 1969)

Biography

Adomas Galdikas was born in 1893 in Giršinai village, near Mosėdis. He attended painting studios in Saint Petersburg and Berlin. Adomas Galdikas continued his studies in Sweden, Italy and France. In 1923, after returning to Lithuania, he founded his own graphics studio in Kaunas, where he worked until 1940. At the same time he was also lecturing at the Kaunas Art School. During World War II Adomas Galdikas was a professor at the Kaunas Applied Arts Institute. Vytautas Kazimieras Jonynas was among his students. From 1946 to 1947 Adomas Galdikas lectured as a professor in Freiburg im Breisgau (École des Arts et Métiers). In 1947 Adomas Galdikas moved to Paris, and in 1952 to the United States. He settled in New York, where he lived until his death.
Since 1920 Adomas Galdikas participated in art exhibitions in Lithuania and abroad. Adomas Galdikas also illustrated books and created scenography for 19 plays at the Kaunas State Theatre. He has also designed a number of interbellum Lithuanian postage stamps, bonds and paper litas banknotes. In Germany, France and the United States he worked mainly as painter.
In 1937 for his triptych „Lithuania“ Adomas Galdikas was awarded the 1937 Paris Exhibition Grand Prix. For the scenography and costumes for drama „Šarūnas“ by Vincas Krėvė-Mickevičius Adomas Galdikas was awarded 1937 Paris Exhibition Golden medal. Works by Adomas Galdikas were acquired by Stieglitz Museum of Applied Arts, Lithuanian M. K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum, Lithuanian Art Museum, Latvian National Museum of Art, Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris, and other museums. Adomas Galdikas died in 1969 in New York, USA.

Style

His stylistic evolution is turbulent, constantly regenerating in plastic searches. In his woks one can feel poetic, romantic mood. Having started as a realist painter, later on (from the 6th decade) absorbed a variety of traditional and modern art currents and formed a distinctive expressionistic manner of a neo-romantic type, which at the end of life became pure expressive abstractionism. His works are characterized by a clear composition, expressive forms, vivid colouring.