PAINTERS from Lithuania

Top 9

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Lithuanian Painters of all time. This list of famous Lithuanian Painters is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875 - 1911)

With an HPI of 65.52, Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis is the most famous Lithuanian Painter.  His biography has been translated into 43 different languages on wikipedia.

Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (Polish: Mikołaj Konstanty Czurlanis; 22 September [O.S. 10 September] 1875 – 10 April [O.S. 28 March] 1911) was a Lithuanian composer, painter, choirmaster, cultural figure, and writer in Polish. Čiurlionis contributed to symbolism and Art Nouveau, and was representative of the fin de siècle epoch. He has been considered one of the pioneers of abstract art in Europe. During his short life, he composed about 400 pieces of music and created about 300 paintings, as well as many literary works and poems. The majority of his paintings are housed in the M. K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum in Kaunas, Lithuania. His works have had a profound influence on modern Lithuanian culture.

2. Isaac Levitan (1860 - 1900)

With an HPI of 60.76, Isaac Levitan is the 2nd most famous Lithuanian Painter.  His biography has been translated into 49 different languages.

Isaac Ilyich Levitan (Russian: Исаа́к Ильи́ч Левита́н; 30 August [O.S. 18 August] 1860 – 4 August [O.S. 22 July] 1900) was a Russian classical landscape painter who advanced the genre of the "mood landscape".

3. Jacques Lipchitz (1891 - 1973)

With an HPI of 57.86, Jacques Lipchitz is the 3rd most famous Lithuanian Painter.  His biography has been translated into 27 different languages.

Jacques Lipchitz (22 August [O.S. 10 August] 1891 – 26 May 1973) was a Lithuanian-born French-American Cubist sculptor. Lipchitz retained highly figurative and legible components in his work leading up to 1915–16, after which naturalist and descriptive elements were muted, dominated by a synthetic style of Crystal Cubism. In 1920 Lipchitz held his first solo exhibition, at Léonce Rosenberg's Galerie L'Effort Moderne in Paris where he was counted as part of the School of Paris. Fleeing the Nazis he moved to the US and settled in New York City and eventually Hastings-on-Hudson. While in the US, he created a number of his best-known works, including the outdoor sculptures The Song of the Vowels, Birth of the Muses, and Bellerophon Taming Pegasus, the last of which was completed after his death.

4. George Maciunas (1931 - 1978)

With an HPI of 54.32, George Maciunas is the 4th most famous Lithuanian Painter.  His biography has been translated into 18 different languages.

George Maciunas (English: ; Lithuanian: Jurgis Mačiūnas; November 8, 1931 Kaunas – May 9, 1978 Boston, Massachusetts) was a Lithuanian American artist, art historian, and art organizer who was the founding member and central coordinator of Fluxus, an international community of artists, architects, composers, and designers. He is most famous for organizing and performing in early Fluxus Happenings and Festivals, for his Fluxus graphic art work, and for assembling a series of highly influential Fluxus artists' multiples.

5. Varvara Stepanova (1894 - 1958)

With an HPI of 53.36, Varvara Stepanova is the 5th most famous Lithuanian Painter.  Her biography has been translated into 19 different languages.

Varvara Fyodorovna Stepanova (Russian: Варва́ра Фёдоровна Степа́нова; 3 November [O.S. 22 October] 1894 – May 20, 1958) was a Russian artist. With her husband Alexander Rodchenko, she was associated with the Constructivist branch of the Russian avant-garde, which rejected aesthetic values in favour of revolutionary ones. Her activities extended into propaganda, poetry, stage scenery and textile designs.

6. Ben Shahn (1898 - 1969)

With an HPI of 53.08, Ben Shahn is the 6th most famous Lithuanian Painter.  His biography has been translated into 20 different languages.

Ben Shahn (September 12, 1898 – March 14, 1969) was an American artist. He is best known for his works of social realism, his left-wing political views, and his series of lectures published as The Shape of Content.

7. Yehuda Pen (1854 - 1937)

With an HPI of 50.45, Yehuda Pen is the 7th most famous Lithuanian Painter.  His biography has been translated into 16 different languages.

Yudel Pen, also known as Yehuda Pen or Yury Pen, (5 June [24 May Old Style] 1854 - 28 February 1937) was a Jewish artist and art teacher active in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union. He is best known for founding an influential art school in Vitebsk and teaching notable avant-garde artists like Marc Chagall, El Lissitzky, and Ossip Zadkine. Pen was one of the first painters to consistently depict Jewish life in the Pale of Settlement; he is sometimes called "the Sholem Aleichem of painting". Born in a poor Jewish family in a shtetl, he showed an early talent for drawing and painting. He got an academic training in the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, and several years after graduation he opened an art school in Vitebsk, where he taught many poor, mainly Jewish children, often for free. Pen was murdered in 1937; though officially called a robbery, his students believed that he was killed by NKVD during the Stalin's purges. A lot of his paintings were lost during the World War II. The surviving works are split between the National Art Museum in Minsk and the Vitebsk Regional Museum of Local History.

8. Stanisław Witkiewicz (1851 - 1915)

With an HPI of 50.23, Stanisław Witkiewicz is the 8th most famous Lithuanian Painter.  His biography has been translated into 20 different languages.

Stanisław Witkiewicz (Lithuanian: Stanislovas Vitkevičius) (8 May 1851 – 5 September 1915) was a Polish painter of Lithuanian origin, art theoretician, and amateur architect, known for his creation of "Zakopane Style".

9. Michał Elwiro Andriolli (1836 - 1893)

With an HPI of 50.10, Michał Elwiro Andriolli is the 9th most famous Lithuanian Painter.  His biography has been translated into 17 different languages.

Michał Elwiro Andriolli (Lithuanian: Mykolas Elvyras Andriolis, Italian: Elviro Michele Andriolli; 2 November 1836, in Vilnius – 23 August 1893, in Nałęczów) was a Polish illustrator, painter and architect of Italian descent. He is notable for his illustrations to Mickiewicz's Pan Tadeusz, as well as a distinctive style of villas built outside Warsaw. He was probably most well known for his architecture – Świdermajer. This was a regional architectural style common in the Otwock, Poland region. These structures were wooden in construction and were popularized from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Its creator was Michał Elwiro Andriolli. It is characterized by gazebos and decorations above the windows, some of the houses also had turrets. Pine trees were planted together with the buildings as part of the composition.