Nude Woman with a Cigarette

When Ada Peldavičiūtė-Montvydienė (1911–1967) a graduate of Kaunas School of Art and Florence Art Academy was leaving Lithuania in 1944, she left behind several portraits (of Elena Žalinkevičaitė-Petrauskienė, Antanas Montvydas and Telesforas Valius) which stood out by their elongated and elegant shapes of human figures, which are unusual in Lithuanian painting. The works verge on sentimentality, but are prevented from slipping over the edge by the energetic charge expressed by the style and the objects portrayed, thanks to the strong spirit of both the model and the painter. The pictures recall Italian (Novecento Italiano) and German (Neue Sachlichkeit) versions of interwar Neo-Classicism. Although the artist studied in Italy, the association with the latter movement was stronger, the more so as Peldavičiūtė was undoubtedly a city dweller, and liked to portray her models not in nature, but in small, gloomy spaces. Text author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė.