The Soldier and the Peasant Woman

Before you is a painting entitled The Soldier and the Peasant Woman by Vilmantas Marcinkevičius. At first glance it is a rather shocking work, wouldn't you say? It depicts a soldier of undefined nationality and a completely indifferent peasant woman. An atmosphere of anxiety is created by expressive brush strokes and sharp, seemingly hostile, color combinations.

It's important to understand that what is crucial is not "what" is portrayed, but "how" it is done. The scene does not show a specific event, but rather an emotion, or perhaps even a condition. The work was inspired by two personal experiences of the author: study at the Academy and … working in the fields.

Background of the painting's creation

Let's return to 1994, when this painting was created. A 24-year old Vilmantas, a student at the Vilnius Academy of Arts, returned to Vilnius after spending a summer picking strawberries in England. At the time, an average student's stipend amounted to only 5 dollars. So, back to Vilnius, and the realization that a departure from the students' dorm was imminent after completion of his studies. What would happen after that? Would he really have to keep working farming jobs in the future?

What thoughts enter the mind of a young, ambitious artist in such a situation? Anger, of course. Fear of the future. An absence of love for farm work, certainly. The Soldier and the Peasant Woman was the artist's first work created upon returning home. Notice his complicated brush work, the sharp color combinations, and how irritably one layer of paint falls on another. This is an authentic expression of anxiety and uncertainty, not to mention the painting's central theme!

Marcinkevičius remembered a comment expressed by one of his instructors, Ričardas Povilas Vaitiekūnas, that a stooped and bent figure is a perennial problem. A figure working in the fields is a frequent theme in the work of modern painters. Here we can recall the potato grubbers of Vincent van Gogh, Jean François Millet's The Winnower, or The Stone Breakers by Gustavo Courbet. All of these works are dismal and dark, posing questions about the difficult plight of man, or even his exploitation. The hunched silhouettes of the potato grubbers were a part of the painter's childhood. In the end, four months of strawberry picking and all the associated unpleasant emotions poured themselves out onto this canvas and uniquely expanded upon the modernist theme.

Briefly about the author

Art critics have ascribed the work of Vilmantas Marcinkevičius to the neoexpressionist style, and in particular to the "Neue Wilden" (the New Wild) movement that formed in Germany in the 1980s. The painters associated with this movement, such as Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer and others painting in expressionist style, gave particular emphasis to the significance of gestures. The themes of their paintings often contain encrypted references to personal experiences.

Marcinkevičius' work also exhibits evidence of the Lithuanian expressionist school whose guiding principals were taught at the Academy. He expanded upon this tradition with decorative elements and sharp, nontraditional coloring that was not representative of Lithuanian art at the start of the 1990s. His paintings are distinguished by:
• elastic drawing,
• vivid coloring,
• spontaneous painting style.

The artist does not shy away from using large formats, experimentation with color, or controversial subjects.