Frozen Action
In Dramatic World's Scene
Read the story and explore painting's archive down below
In 1997, after obtaining a Master's degree in Monumental Art from the Vilnius Academy of Arts, he became involved in the cultural scene as a painter and a film director-cinematographer.
His compositions are dominated by figures of people, such as ancient thinkers, priestess, gods, and goddesses, which are depicted sketchily and abstractly, sometimes resembling projective drawings used in psychology. The bodies of the characters are at once static and highly dynamic, captured in a dramatic motion, as if we are looking at a frozen moment of rising action or denouement.
However, the high emotional tension, non-verbal body language, and minimal graphic symbolism are all that the artist provides to the viewer, cleverly masking literary, mythological, and cinematic intertexts without delving into a direct narrative. By exploring the theme of interpersonal connections, Donatas Pirštelis reflects on the anxious premonitions of the future and contemporary history.
A more realistic-surrealist form of paintings dominated his earlier, youthful works, but the dramatic mood, body modeling, painting on paper and the theme of complex interpersonal relationships have remained to this day.
Having shifted his focus to film directing and design, he returned to the public sphere of painting only in 2020, with the exhibition "Alethea".
Between 1997 and 2003, he created a stained-glass portrait of Petras Vileišis, 10 large-scale mural paintings on residential buildings in Poland (in Gdańsk, Warsaw, Łódź, Katowice, etc.).
He also participated in a group as exhibition "Freska" at Vilnius Town Hall, and presented a solo painting exhibition at the "Arka" gallery.
Mythological stories, ancient tragedies, and comedies are universal, historical lessons of human existence, deeply intertwined with our daily lives today. I create intuitively, starting with a gesture that intertwines with my personal experiences and mythology. A journey to the end of the night - that's how I could call my paintings.
- Donatas Pirštelis
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Donatas Pirštelis belongs to the first generation of artists of independent Lithuania, as he started studying monumental art in 1991, after Lithuania had recently survived the struggle of resistance against the Soviet army.
The country experienced a turning point, was at an intermediate stop, in the transition from the bloody occupation past, artistic restrictions to the free, democratic Western world. This also led to the stylistic liberation of artists, because for many years dramatic, modern expression and heavy themes were prohibited in the Soviet Union. It was these artistic elements that became an important part of Donatas' work.
His works are characterized by dark, stained-glass-like translucent and glowing colors, spaces veiled in mist and mystical light, and body studies modeled in the genre of the nude. The abstracted motifs of his paintings are full of grotesque contrasts—visual poetry and brutality, controlled chaos, elements of tenderness and horror.
Donatas drawings can be found in the film „Between Shades of Grey“, paintings are housed in private collections.
In these days Donatas merges elements of drawing and painting, using mixed media (paper, oil pastels, charcoal, oil, acrylic, aerosol paints, pencils), the skills of monumental art, and a cinematic atmosphere.
Since then, he has participated in several visual art projects and was featured twice at the "Art Vilnius" international art fair with the "AP Gallery" representing him.
Alongside his company "CineFX," he has created various props for exhibitions at the MO Museum in Vilnius.