The Romanticisms
1 July, 2025 – 11 January, 2026
Without spirit, without heart – these are but crowds of skeletons!
Adam Mickiewicz. ‘Ode to Youth’
Emerging as a countermovement to the rationalism of Classicism, Romanticism swept across Europe as a new artistic and literary movement that opened up space for emotions, dreams, and individualism. The genius of the creator began to be boldly exalted, spiritual values were elevated above material ones, and those seeking moral support or inspiration were encouraged to look backwards, to a past stretching back centuries. In Lithuania, however, Romanticism ‘lingered’; rather than yielding to Realism, which was gaining prominence in the West during the second half of the 19th century, it transformed into Neo-romanticism, or National Romanticism, which inventively employed the expressive means of Symbolism, Art Nouveau, and other contemporary styles.
This distinctive transformation arose from Lithuania’s specific political and cultural situation. Forcibly incorporated into Tsarist Russia precisely when voices extolling personal and national freedom began spreading from the West, and having endured the failed November (1830–1831) and January (1863–1864) Uprisings with the deaths and exile of its bravest citizens, the land clung to its traditions more firmly than ever before. The bards of Romanticism – with pen, brush, and piano keys – tirelessly created for an entire century the image of the grand Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a dreamland and era shrouded in nostalgic mist, providing a space in which the nation could survive.
The exhibition takes as its starting point the first volume of Adam Mickiewicz’s Poetry, published in Vilnius in 1822, for it was at Vilnius University that the Vilnius school of Romanticism, common to both Lithuanian and Polish culture, emerged and flourished. The endpoint is marked by the outbreak of the First World War (1914), which brought about great historical, political, and social changes in the region whilst also defining the thematic and chronological boundaries of the Vilnius Picture Gallery.
The exhibition narrative has been constructed contextually to illuminate the connections and differences between local processes and international aesthetic and social developments. The exhibition thus invites us to view Romanticism as a cultural formation in which various art forms, politics, and social changes are closely intertwined, together creating a complex, multifaceted narrative that, in Lithuania’s case, is by no means always ‘romantic’.
Organizer LNDM Vilniaus paveikslų galerija
Exhibition Curators: Aistė Bimbirytė, Gabija Kasparavičiutė-Kaminskienė, Dalia Tarandaitė, Joana Vitkutė
Architect Jurgis Dagelis
Designers: Edita Namajūnienė, Domantas Pigulevičius
Editor Laura Patiomkinaitė
Translator Raminta Bumbulytė
Conservators: Algimantas Vaineikis, Lina Jurnienė, Audronė Petroševičiūtė, Paulius Zovė, Arūnas Baublys, Birutė Miškinienė, Inga Petkutytė, Daiva Petrauskaitė, Milda Šulniūtė (trainee), Elena Adelina Kofman (trainee)
Partners: Lithuanian National Museum, National Museum – Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, Vilnius University Museum, Vilnius University Library, The Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania, Lithuanian Theater, Music and Cinema Museum, The Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore, Władysław Syrokomla Museum, M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, Samogitian Museum Alka, Ukmergė Regional Museum, Šiauliai Aušros Museum, Trakai History Museum, Lithuanian Art Centre TARTLE, Muzeum literatury im. Adama Mickiewicza, Muzeum Narodowe w Krakowie, Rūta and Rimvydas Baranauskai, Dr Jaunius Gumbis, Dr Kristina Sabaliauskaitė, Milanijus Jankauskas, BTA Insurance
Media sponsor JCDecaux Lithuania
Project is financed by Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania
- Click here to buy an e-ticket for the exhibition
- Plan your visit
- Book a tour in English: +370 681 90329, gidai.vpg@lndm.lt
4 Didžioji st, Vilnius, Lithuania
+370 5 261 1685
vpg@lndm.lt
