ARTS AND LITERATURE

Stasys Eidrigevičius, compiled by Jūratė Čerškutė. Sketches of a Wandering Artist (Meno klajūno eskizai: esė ir kiti tekstai), Vilnius: Apostrofa, 2023, 344 pp.

This book consists of texts and written sketches (compiled from a range of small storylines) by the world-renowned artist Stasys Eidrigevičius, which provide an insight into Stasys’s mind and the visual world he creates, as well as his concept of multi-genre work. It is the testimony of a visual artist who also writes, recounting what happened to Stasys, when and how. The 32 texts presented in the book are like reports from Eidrigevičius’s life, his wanderings and artistic journeys, which unleash creative energy and curiosity. They are stories about important people and significant encounters, museums visited or works of art remembered. These stories are complemented by Stasys’s alphabet, created especially for this book, which explains 172 keywords that are important for the understanding of the artist himself and his work. The book is illustrated with pages from Eidrigevičius’s sketchbooks and visual chronicles, published here for the first time.

Stasys Eidrigevičius is a world-renowned graphic artist, painter, poster artist, illustrator, creator of face theatre and master of visual metaphor. Winner of the Lithuanian National Prize for Culture and Art (2001) and numerous international prizes, he has held numerous exhibitions over 50 years of his creative activity. Since 1980, he has lived in Warsaw and travelled extensively around the world.