In 2019, Kaunas A. Martinaitis Art School celebrates the 60^th anniversary of educational and creative activity. On this occasion, a conceptual exhibition “Facing Kaunas” of the students of the school will be held in the exhibition halls of the Town Hall Branch of the Kaunas City Museum all autumn, where the visitors will mainly see drawings, sculptures, and ceramic works.

The idea of the teacher and curator of the exhibition Elena Balsiukaitė-Brazdžiūnienė is to present the works of spatial plastic arts of various age students of Kaunas A. Martinaitis Art School, reflecting not only the curriculum tasks but also the artistic skills and abilities acquired by children. Not only sculpture and drawing are taught at the school; however, the exhibition space of the Town Hall (red-brick vaulted cellars) has preconditioned the choice of the objects for the exhibition: the combination of spatial art and white drawing sheets looks the most aesthetic here and stands out in the space.

The sculptures and ceramic works have been created as individual tasks and as project/group works. They reveal the creative cooperation between teachers and students and the originality of students’ thinking. In the exhibition, one can see both conventional anatomic solutions of people or animals (modelled heads or animal figures) and modern spacial forms: ceramic plates, installations, and works of metal and wire. Such an exposition not only presents the curriculum of the school but also reveals the creativity of students and creates an artistically rich and original view of the exhibition. The same could be said about the drawings in the exhibition, which reflect the whole variety of creative solutions.

The viewers can enjoy the students’ achievements in painting and graphics in the virtual material displayed on the screen during the exhibition. This material complements the main exhibition and expresses the wide range of artistic learning opportunities and how successful children have been in mastering different techniques: gouache, pastel, watercolor, ink, felt-tip pens, collage, photography, etc.

Kaunas A. Martinaitis Art School has an extremely rich cultural history. In recent decades, the school has developed traditions of organizing various projects and implementing them together with students publicly: decorating not only the school environment, but also urban spaces, organizing exhibitions of earth art, and joining Kaunas art campaigns and cultural events.

The concept of the exhibition “Facing Kaunas” expresses a simple, yet an essential and important idea: the teacher and artist are always in front, “facing” a young person or a student. This has lasted for sixty years at Kaunas A. Martinaitis Art School. Successfully, it seems.

Art critic dr. Raimonda Simanaitienė

The organizers of the exhibition – teachers of ceramics and sculpture: Remigijus Sederevičius, Andrius Siderkevičius, teacher-methodologist Aida Ragauskienė, senior teacher Herbertas Manomaitis, curator of the exhibition, teacher-methodologist Elena Brazdžiūnienė, teacher-methodologist Aušra Andziulytė and teacher-expert Judita Budriūnaitė.