Olympics - 1984, lithograph, 30x21.5”/ 76x55cm, signed by the artist

Centennial Price: $550/ €475/ £425 unframed until 31 December 2018

Viesulas created the lithograph Olympics at Philadelphia's Brandywine Workshop in 1984. It was the very last imprint that he made. It is valued by the Workshop at $800. A number of this signed, limited edition lithographic print are being sold at a special price to raise funds towards a commemorative grant, a ‘diploma for displaced persons'. The family estate is grateful to the Brandywine Workshop and founder Allan Edmunds - a former student of Viesulas - for making the print available to raise funds in support of the celebration of Viesulas’ centenary, and in recognition of his many contributions to art and the artists in the Philadelphia community where he taught.

The lithograph was created to mark the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, a sporting event that showcased both the promise of Olympic ideals, and simultaneously the ways in which Cold War ideology eclipsed these ideals. Fourteen Eastern bloc countries, led by the USSR, boycotted the Games of 1984, in symbolic retaliation for the US-led boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. For Viesulas, an artist whose experience of exile from Soviet-occupied Lithuania framed his artistic career, this political game of tit-for-tat was a singular event. In the abstracted elements of the Olympic torch represented here, the beacon becomes instead a conflagration of youthful ambition and ancient calendar rites held aloft on a crutch. An upended roller skate, pre-Colombian sundials evoke the symbol of the Olympic rings, while the whole ensemble is suggestive of Lady Liberty’s torch. Here however, it is ablaze with the frustrated ambitions of athletes from both sides of the Iron Curtain, and redolent of our long history of repression of the human spirit by politics and ideology.

Romas Viesulas: Grafika/ Graphic Art 

Catalog Raisonnée and Biography

212pp, in Lithuanian and English

Lithuanian Art Museum Press, 2018

$55/ €45/ £40 

The National Gallery of Lithuania is publishing the first retrospective monograph on Viesulas’ life and work. The book launch coincides with the opening of a retrospective exhibit of his work, from early figurative prints through to more abstract later work, for which he was recognised and collected by some of the foremost museums in the world. 

Also available to purchase at the Vilnius and Philadelphia exhibits. Please see EVENTS page for more details.