Gediminas Hill from Tilto Street

The sculptor Juozas Kėdainis (1915–1998) studied at Kaunas School of Art in the 1930s, and between 1946 and 1951 he lectured at Kaunas Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts. He moved to Vilnius in 1951, and lectured at the Institute of Art for many years. He enjoyed sketching the Old Town, and in one sketch he depicted the same part of Tilto Street as Dobuzhinsky had, with the Baroque house of the Rževuskis family. Unlike Dobuzhinsky, he looked towards Gediminas Hill and not the cathedral. He emphasised the tower as a historic symbol of the city, with the flag of the Lithuanian SSR flying from it. Kėdainis’ sketch of Tilto Street has some modern aspects to it: a Pobeda car can be seen on the cobbled road, and street children are looking at it. Text author Laima Laučkaitė.