EXHIBITION "ANTANAS INGELEVIČIUS: CREATOR AND THE CITY"

The exhibition "Antanas Ingelevičius: Creator and the City" is a museum exploration, an exercise for the imagination, and an open set of questions. What do we actually know about photographer Antanas Ingelevičius (1892–1947?)? Why did he choose to photograph Kaunas of the 1920s and 1930s differently than other photographers of his time? Why hasn’t Antanas Ingelevičius assumed a place in Lithuanian photography history? And how did his works find their way into the depository of Vilnius Ethnography Museum (curr. National Museum of Lithuania) in 1948?

The life and personality of Antanas Ingelevičius come together, like a puzzle, from different fragments: historical contexts, archival documents, letters, texts, and memories. But his photographs are the most important document in this exploration. As we look at them, we can imagine Antanas and try to understand their perspective and his unique view of Kaunas just as it was becoming Lithuania’s provisional capital and embarking on an era of revitalization.

This extensive photographic archive serves as a journal for both the artist and his city. With the help of these photographs, this exhibition creates a visual map of an unseen (like Antanas himself) and unfamiliar Kaunas, behind its façade. It is a living map, made up not only of streets, buildings, rivers, and hills, but also people. These photographs preserve the everyday life, moods, and local memory of these "city creators".

A. Ingelevičius captured people, himself and the city landscape in his own style, but we can also get to know him as a photographer of a specific object-artwork. In 1924–1929, A. Ingelevičius began working as a hired photographer at the M. K. Čiurlionis Gallery in Kaunas. He was particularly appreciated for his professionalism, as he was the one entrusted with photographing the works of M. K. Čiurlionis. This is evidenced by the album Twelve Paintings by M. K. Čiurlionis "Signs of the Zodiac" with photographs of M. K. Čiurlionis' works taken by A. Ingelevičius, published by the gallery in 1927, numbered in 50 copies.

In 2022, during the events of Kaunas – the European Capital of Culture, the exhibition "Antanas Ingelevičius: Creator and the City" became part of the programme. The National Museum of Lithuania has dedicated A. Ingelevičius' work as a gift to Kaunas for the celebration of a festive year. Currently, a year later, this special gift has come to the city of A. Ingelevičius' work.

In a review about the 3rd exhibition mounted by the Union of Lithuanian Amateur Photographers in 1936, Antanas Ingelevičius encouraged all photographers to "learn how to see". This exhibition invites us to do the same: to learn how to see the margins of history, forgotten museum collections, one’s own city, and its unknown artists and creators.

We invite you to walk through Kaunas of a century ago, as seen through the modern perspective of Antanas Ingelevičius, and to engage in a discussion about questions that remain relevant today: How does an artist create a city, and how does a city create the artist?