The Happiness of Weaving, a retrospective of Feliksas Jakubauskas goes on show at the Museum of Applied Arts and Design
Exhibition opening at 6 pm on Thursday, 17 September, 2026
On Thursday, 17 September, at 6 pm, the Museum of Applied Arts and Design (Arsenalo St. 3A) of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art (LNMA) opens Feliksas Jakubauskas (1949–2025): The Happiness of Weaving – a retrospective of one of the leading contemporary Lithuanian textile artists. The exhibition spans over four decades of the artist’s legacy, focusing on his final decades as the most powerful expression of his artistic individuality and virtuoso technique. The display also evokes moments from the weaving process, frozen in time the way the artist witnessed them himself.
“Jakubauskas’s tapestries do not exist solely for visual appreciation. We can also hear and read them. The artist uses yarn, colour, and shapes to construct spaces for feelings and thoughts. His legacy extends far beyond his exceptional tapestry pieces. From him, we have inherited the weaving tradition that is vibrant, contemporary, and steeped in music and poetry,” says Džiuljeta Žiugždienė, Director of the Museum of Applied Arts and Design of the LNMA. “May his works continue to talk about beauty, patience, and the joy of creation.”
The warp and weft of success and recognition
The intent of the exhibition extends beyond presenting Jakubauskas’s legacy embracing the artist’s singular relationship with textiles. According to Dr Jurgita Ludavičienė, co-curator of the exhibition: “Jakubauskas is indeed a major figure of Lithuanian textiles who has had a strong influence on several generations of contemporary textile artists. However, we wanted to tell the story of his artistic career as that of a highly emotional human fulfilment and to portray Feliksas as a creator who discovered the true meaning of life and happiness in his profession. We wanted to speak of his love for weaving, his incredible diligence, his sense of colour, and many other elements woven together to convey the happiness achieved through his existence in textiles.”
Dr Lijana Natalevičienė, curator of the exhibition, invites viewers to experience the artist’s world more intimately: “Step into his workshop, see the loom where a cartoon was woven into a tapestry, and enjoy the curated selection of his finest works from the last four decades.”
“Jakubauskas is a unique phenomenon – an artistic terroir in the world of textiles, deeply rooted in Lithuanian soil,” she notes. “His strength lies in his positivity and his ability to touch the deepest human emotions. He could weave entire worlds on his loom: full of inner peace, free from destruction, and rich with everything that is important and dear to us all. He achieved this through remarkable simplicity and economy of means. At the same time technical mastery was at the core of his practice – his exquisite command of weaving transformed craft into art.”
Feliksas Jakubauskas, who bore a name that itself signifies happiness (Latin felix — happy, fortunate), dedicated the better part of his life to textiles. He was blessed with an excellent education and opportunities to encounter the latest developments in textile art firsthand, rather than merely through art books. It was the warp on which he built his own unique artistic idiom. At the very start of his artistic education, at Stepas Žukas Technical School of Applied Arts in Kaunas, he learned composition under Filomena Ušinskaitė, a stained-glass artist who adhered to the interwar art deco principles. Later, at the Lithuanian State Art Institute, his professors were textile grands Juozas Balčikonis and Vladas Daujotas. He furthered his studies at the Academy of Applied Arts in Budapest, graduating in 1980 as a textile artist specialising in tapestry.
Through his talent and dedication, he earned the respect of the textile art community. Jakubauskas presented nearly thirty solo exhibitions in Lithuania and abroad and participated in more than two hundred group exhibitions worldwide. His international reputation was affirmed by major awards at competitive textile exhibitions in Łódź, Pittsburgh, Cheongju, Beijing, Budapest, and elsewhere. He was invited to serve on international exhibition selection committees and expert panels. Although thoroughly acquainted with experimental developments in textile art, he never succumbed to the lure of novelty for its own sake. Instead, he remained faithful to weaving, continually refining its expressive possibilities. He conceptually transformed the classical tradition of tapestry weaving, infusing it with a contemporary sensibility, poetic resonance, and the vibrant heritage of Lithuanian rural weaving, thereby achieving a harmonious balance between tradition and modernity.
Tapestries steeped in music and poetry
Jakubauskas’s textiles are characterised by an associative visual language built upon poetic imagery and metaphor. Inspired by literature, classical culture, biblical narratives, and nature, he consistently avoided literal representation. In his tapestries, clouds, skies, blooming flax fields, and the chill of evening were translated into abstractions of light and shadow, contemplating both the earthly and the spiritual.
A masterly composer of geometrical forms – such as squares, triangles, pyramids, fans, and straight or diagonal lines – he used these shapes to evoke a gamut of moods: sadness or joy, longing or serenity, all echoes in the rhythms and surface vibrations of his weave. Fittingly described as a “jazz-making artist” for his improvisational style, he infused his tapestries with a deep musicality, giving them titles and compositions that echo preludes, nocturnes, fugues, and sonatas.
Jakubauskas’s unique artistic language was rooted in traditional Lithuanian rural weaving. He integrated traditional tapestry techniques with enlarged twill- weave fragments, subtle gradations of colour, and shimmering viscose thread, achieving a seamless fusion of the raw tactile textures with elegant forms, optical depth, and contemporary expression. The exhibition invites visitors to experience the artist’s finesse through a metaphorical music of yarn played by colours, shapes, and the rhythmical beat of the loom.
Feliksas Jakubauskas (1949–2025): The Happiness of Weaving runs at the Museum of Applied Arts and Design of the LNMA until 31 December. Information on in-depth exhibition tours and education programmes is available at the LNMA website and on social media.
Project organized by the Museum of Applied Arts and Design of the LNMA
Project manager Džiuljeta Žiugždienė
Curators: Dr Lijana Natalevičienė, Dr Jurgita Ludavičienė
Coordinator Lina Bilinskienė
Architects: Saulius Valius, Rasa Butškytė
Architect-Coordinator Eglė Jagminė
Designer Marius Žalneravičius
Editor Dr Ieva Puluikienė
Translator Dr Raminta Bumbulytė
3A Arsenalo st, Vilnius, Lithuania
+370 5 212 1813;
+370 5 261 25 48; +370 5 262 80 80.
tddm@lndm.lt
