Stiklių Street

Bronisław Jamontt (1886–1957), a graduate of the Art Department at Stephen Báthory University, became a professor in the 1930s. His early work from the 1920s is distinguished by its Art Nouveau forms of expression. In the 1930s, he began to paint more expressive dynamic compositions, with old architecture, stormy clouds and wind-blown vegetation. There are no signs of nature in his picture of Stiklių Street: the broken shapes of the architecture, the wooden pavements, and the street crossed by an arch create the impression of a compressed and deformed urban space. The work is expressive and painted in chaotic brushstrokes, the colouring is sharp, and a strong contrast is created between the yellow wall and the blue sky, and the street plunged in blue shadows with dark and hunched figures moving about at the end of it. In Jamontt’s picture, even on a sunny day in the Jewish Ghetto the mood is unsettled, cold and restless. Text author Laima Laučkaitė.