Romas Viesulas was born in 1918 in Lithuania, the same year that it became an independent country, though not for long. When it was invaded in the Second World War, he left his home as an exile from war, and never went back. The ‘Diploma for Displaced Persons’ that Viesulas was awarded in 1947 was created by the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, with a campus in Freiburg Germany. It was financed by the French on German soil after the war, specifically for refugees. With this degree, Viesulas emigrated to the US to develop his artistic vision, which centered on his experience of exile. His work is now in the permanent collections of the Met, MoMA, Philadelphia Museum of Art and many other major institutions. Ultimately, he went on to represent the US in the Venice Biennale in 1970.
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diploma for displaced persons
There are more displaced people and refugees now than at any other time in recorded history, and they are on the move in numbers not seen since Viesulas left his native Lithuania in World War II. Viesulas’ art reminds us of the human aspirations of independence and freedom of expression. With your contribution, Viesulas' legacy can inspire and enable other artists exiled by war, ideology, natural disaster or injustice.
Will you help us to create a diploma for displaced persons, a grant to help displaced artists reailze their vision? All donations will go towards the creation of a grant to help artists who have lost their country, their home or their voice. Click on the links below or on the GALLERY page to purchase the commemorative print, the catalog, and to make a donation. And thank you.
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.