Spring (A sketch for the plafond for Kaunas Aviator's House)

The figures of monumental naked women floating in the sky in the sketch called Spring can be recognised in another ceiling decoration by Stasys Ušinskas (1905–1974), which used to be owned by Jūratė Ušinskaitė, and since 2006 has been in the M.K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum. Both pictures were painted in about 1937, to commemorate the tragic flight by the Lithuanian pilots Darius and Girėnas. The main difference between the two compositions is that in the Lituanica memorial in the M.K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum there are five instead of two figures, and one of them is a naked man in the same posture as the female nude in the foreground of Spring. Today, it is difficult to tell whether or not these two compositions were parts of the same project. While no sources that can verify the hypothesis have yet been found, we can only guess that both large-format works depicting nude people floating in the air were to be used in the Darius and Girėnas House of Culture designed by Jurgis Okunis and built in 1935 in Panerių Street in Vilijampolė. Text author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė.