ROMUALDAS AUGŪNAS: TO THE SUMMIT OF ČIURLIONIS

Romualdas Augūnas' photographs from his expedition to the Pamir moumtains in 1964 not only illustrate the mountaineering journey, they are the documents of one of the most subtle events of cultural resistance in Soviet Lithuania. Together with a group of Lithuanian mountain climbers, he had climbed an as yet unnamed peak, which eventually gained the name of Čiurlionis, as if encoding a symbol of national memory in the topography of the Empire. This fact was not just a sentimental tribute to the artist – it meant a delicate declaration of cultural autonomy concealed in a geographical space where a national identity on the Soviet map was inscribed as an invisible though indelible mark.

Romualdas Augūnas' photographs from his expedition to the Pamir moumtains in 1964 not only illustrate the mountaineering journey, they are the documents of one of the most subtle events of cultural resistance in Soviet Lithuania. Together with a group of Lithuanian mountain climbers, he had climbed an as yet unnamed peak, which eventually gained the name of Čiurlionis, as if encoding a symbol of national memory in the topography of the Empire. This fact was not just a sentimental tribute to the artist – it meant a delicate declaration of cultural autonomy concealed in a geographical space where a national identity on the Soviet map was inscribed as an invisible though indelible mark.

Visually, Augūnas is close not only to the Lithuanian school of humanist photography, but also to the broader Central European critical gaze, which makes it possible to speak of the landscape as an ideologically charged place. Here, a mountain becomes not only a natural phenomenon, but also a cultural text that takes in the names of a nation, longing, resistance.

It is particularly important that the choice was made to give one of the peaks the name of M. K. Čiurlionis. In his creation, the artist aspired to combine sound, image and spirit, his works are often considered mystical and incompatible with Soviet rationality. Therefore, his name for the mountain is like a symbolic synthesis: a mountain as music, as a cosmic vision, as a way to know the world not by measuring it, but by feeling it. 

Three peaks named after M. K. Čiurlionis (5794 m), K. Donelaitis (5837 m) and Lithuania (6080 m) have been climbed in the period from 28 July to 18 August 1964.
The leader of the expedition: Kazimieras Monstvilas.
Participants of the expedition: Juozas Antanavičius, Balys Binkauskas, Aleksandras Jurgelionis, Romualdas Kęstutis Augūnas, Algimantas Krikštopaitis, Augustas Kubilius, Stasys Miglinas, Jaroslavas Okulič-Kazarinas, Vilius Šaduikis.

The exhibition curators: Gintaras Česonis (Kaunas Photography Gallery), Aidas Kulbokas (M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art)

The exhibition designer: Jonas Vaikšnoras