Pranciškus Gerlikas

blog

6 May

It’s been a year since my father, painter and portraitist Pranciškus Gerlikas passed away on the 6th of May 2020. The opening of his 80th-anniversary exhibition was postponed due to covid-19 measures in Lithuania in April 2020. It was intended to be a retrospective exhibition and an account of the work of this lifetime – more than 60 years of prolific creative output.

This blog post is dedicated to commemorate the one-year anniversary of his death, as well as an attempt to offer an overview of his life and creative legacy.

Pranciškus was the only and much-awaited child in the family, yet he had a difficult start. His father developed acute pneumonia when forced to cut wood while being ill with the flu on a freezing cold day under Nazi German occupation. While his parents went to see doctors, the three-year-old, who was left with a maid, crawled towards the doghouse… Upon returning, parents found their son in the pool of blood, the dog had severely bitten the toddler’s face. He was rushed to a hospital and a war surgeon was able to “patch it up”, but the scars stayed for life. This shocking incident only worsened the elder Gerlikas’ condition, and soon he died. His mother soon lost an unborn baby in the wake of ever-changing armies. Soldiers devastated the farm. When the Soviets occupied the country, collectivization began and the well-off family lost everything, the lands, their livestock nationalized and given to a collective farm, their bank accounts confiscated. In the end, they became the poorest people in the village. Not only that, because of their prior status the mother and son were under a constant threat of deportation to Siberia.

His mother Petronėlė Gerlikienė later recalled how they stashed away all their American things and stopped sleeping at home. As soon as they saw car lights, she would run to the fields with the child in her arms, fall to the ground, and lie in wait for them to leave. That way they survived.
They had to face this harsh new reality and both dreamt of a better tomorrow, where both would be repaid for their loss, poverty and suffering. This time would come eventually. Pranciskus, at the time already married and expecting his first child, received a sizable inheritance from a childless relative in the USA, which enabled him to devote his life solely to art, and his other interests. Petronele too, after retirement, put her energy and visions into textiles and eventually paintings, and enjoyed recognition and success.

For Pranciškus Gerlikas, the creator's ideal was Italian Renaissance-era artist Leonardo da Vinci. For he was not only one of the world's leading painters, but also an inventor, engineer, anatomist, architect, mystic… a universal personality. Pranciškus Gerlikas sought to be like him – from an early age, he liked to draw and paint. There are several surviving early paintings, a portrait of his mother Petronėlė Gerlikienė, a neighbour – an old lady, self-portraits, landscapes, and still-lives… His inquisitiveness led him to a library in the town where he studied painting and composition by copying works by Leonardo da Vinci, Peter Paul Rubens, and Rembrandt. His fascination with and love of the three artists stayed with him through his lifetime, and he said that by studying their artwork he learned everything he needed to express his own creativity. Later in 1980 while visiting Amsterdam he purchased several albums on the artists. As a child, I often sat in his studio watching him paint and leafing through his extensive library of albums.

Portrait of an art critic Vladas Drėma, 1979. Canvas, oil, 146x114.

While studying at the Art Institute (now Vilnius Academy of Arts) he took up watercolour and mastered this technique, although, his most important artwork is executed in oil paint.
Pranciskus Gerlikas was very interested in colour and colour theory, pigments and their chemical composition, and extensively studied their emotional impact on people. He had his own painting technique, methods of layering paint, always made the primer for canvases himself, and his goal was to keep his artwork unchanged for centuries.

Portrait of actress Kazimiera Kymantaitė, 1987. Canvas, oil, 116x89.

Pranciškus was interested in anatomy, physiognomy, parapsychology, people's emotional and psychological states, and their expression. In his portraits, he sought not only to capture the likeness of his subjects but also through iconography to convey the essence of their character, creative ideas, their occupation. His portraits are character studies, he enjoyed lively conversations with his subjects in his studio preferring to really learn to know the person, asking questions, observing, sketching, and taking notes. He painted more than 400 portraits, mostly of Lithuanian contemporary cultural elite including composer Bronius Kutavičius, poets Paulius Širvys, Justinas Marcinkevičius, Eduardas Mieželaitis, Jonas Strielkūnas, actor Juozas Budraitis, and many others. In later years he devoted a lot of attention to historical and religious figures.

Portrait of a poet Justinas Marcinkevičius. 1978. Canvas, oil, 162x130 cm.

“In painting, I portray my contemporaries – the educators of the Lithuanian people and the national heroes of the past. Revealing their individualities, the authenticity of their spirit. In portraits and other paintings, I seek to invest energy emitting positive emotions, optimism, willingness to live healthily and culture to improve the world...”

— Pranciškus Gerlikas, exhibition opening speech, 2017

At the Baltic seaside, 1982 — At the Baltic seaside. 1982. Canvas, oil, 50x70.

Pranciškus Gerlikas was also a very sensitive and prolific landscape painter. He loved nature and painted a more abstract, romantic and imaginative vision of it, a study of his inner state.

At the Baltic Sea shore, 1982 — At the Baltic Sea shore. 1982. Canvas, oil, 50x70.

My father wrote poetry, kept a diary all his life, and was a man of ideas.
One essential aspect of his life, without which it would be impossible to fully understand him as a creative personality, was his technical inventions, drawings of various flying machines and innovative vehicles. He loved to discuss his latest innovation or design in great detail within the family. P. Gerlikas was also very technically minded and sought to understand the mechanics of movement and aerodynamics not only of a machine but also anatomical capabilities of a human body in a muscle-powered flight.

Flight, 1989 — Flight. 1989. Canvas, oil, 130x160.

There are many drawings of various flying apparatuses inspired by the ancient myth of Icarus – the biggest dream of my father was to give a man wings and freedom of flight.

Drawings of a flying machine, 2005 — Technical drawing of a flying machine, 2005. Paper, pencil, 100x73.

Pranciškus Gerlikas’ almost exact contemporary was a Belgian sculptor and assemblagist Henri Van Herwegen (1940-2019), known by his pseudonym Panamarenko, both shared a similar fascination with flight and seems on the conceptual level the two created in tandem, each in his own universe. Below are several of P. Gerlikas’ drawings.

Drawing of a flying machine, 2006. Paper, pencil, 100x73.

Drawing of a flying machine, 2005. Paper, pencil, 100x73.

Pranciškus Gerlikas was born on the 17th of April 1940, in Mažrimai, north-western Lithuania. He studied at Vilnius Art Institute from 1963 to 1968; started to participate in exhibitions since 1972; became a member of the Lithuanian Artists' Association in 1976. Many of Pranciškus Gerlikas’ paintings have been acquired by museums, private collectors, public and private organizations in Lithuania and abroad. He was a member of M. K. Čiurlionis, Žemaičiai Culture Societies, Šilaliečiai Social Clubs. Has held more than 50 personal exhibitions in Lithuania and elsewhere.