Young Woman Lying down

An early, modern work from Vytautas Kasiulis’ Parisian period, depicting a nude young woman in an interior. The canvas’ decorative expression and condensed vision is close to Vytautas Kasiulis’ illustrations that were created at a similar time in Paris for the book of poetry by Latvian Ilona Leimanė (Ugunsputns [Fire bird], 1951) and the collection by avantgarde poet Henrikas Radauskas Strėlė danguje [Arrow in the sky]. Here, as in the ink drawings that illustrated the books, what stands out is the same division into seperate segments, the transformation of the woman’s figure, and the face in which only the most general, unifying features are marked, and the crown of curls covering the head. A bright, contrasting pallette dominates the canvas (black, red and blue), with the artist’s attention focusing on the active bluring of colours.