Giedrius Kazimierėnas, Hymns of Hell (2021)

“On 1-25 September 2021, the Vilnius Academy of Art Gallery ‘Titanikas’ (Maironio St 3, Vilnius) hosted Giedrius Kazimierėnas’s exhibition Hymns of Hell (curator Dr Rasa Gečaitė). Kazimierėnas (b. 1948) spent seven years (2014-2021) studying and painting the Commedia and was particularly influenced by Salvador Dalí’s Dante illustration cycle. Also advertised as Cantos. Inferno. Dante700, the exhibition featured 10 large oil on canvas paintings inspired by select cantos of Inferno and Purgatorio which, according to the artist, best resonate with the spirit of our age. Seven works for which Inferno provided the stimulus include Cocoons, The Lustful, The Suicides, The Hypocrites, The Traitors, The Simoniacs, and The Violent against God, Nature, and Art, while three paintings (The Envious, The Prideful, and The Mass of Envy) are based on Purgatorio. Kazimierėnas interprets Dante loosely, inventing new images not found in the cantos in question and incorporating references to Renaissance and modern art. In Cocoons, which depicts the vestibule of Hell, the artist has placed the morally neutral in cocoons acting as symbols of their sealed-off, safe life, while The Violent against God, Nature, and Art features Antonello da Messina’s Salvator mundi (c. 1465) juxtaposed with Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square (1915), a 20th-century non-figurative icon and image of the divine.

“Kazimierėnas’s paintings were later exhibited in Laiptai Gallery in Šiauliai from 27 October to 17 November 2021. An exhibition catalogue was published as Pragaro giesmės. Inni dell’Inferno (Vilnius: Petro ofsetas, 2021).”    –Aistė Kiltinavičiūtė

Contributed by Aistė Kiltinavičiūtė