Art critic Viktoras Liutkus writes about Bronius Gražys’s exhibition “SUMMER SETTING INTO SNOW”:
In 1994, sharp-eyed art critic Gražina Kliaugienė wrote about Bronius Gražys: “Bronius is a person of passion, with humor, expression, and the ability to say ‘stop’ in time.” Today, I would add to her words: he is not lacking in imagination but tends to control and stage it in his own way. He is a stubborn romantic, never tired of walking through Vilnius and the forests of Lithuania. For him, the observation of a motif discovered (or seen) in the environment, its analysis in the mind, and ultimately transforming it into a painting through associations and symbols, is important. These are unusual because they almost always have visual intrigue created from colors, forms, lines, light, shadows, figures, objects, or architectural fragments, thus inviting the viewer to trace the idea of the concept in the paintings, to try walking the same path as the artist.
The metaphorical title of the exhibition might suggest that the images in the author’s paintings seem to “travel” from the summer greenery to the white snow of winter. It appears so, but not always. Yes, in winter landscapes, there is much whiteness and at the same time soft, “wadded” dullness, Vilnius courtyards submerged in silence, streets almost empty. But among the snowdrifts, you find the sharp flash of yellow (“Užgavėnės,” 2023), burning car headlights (“Winter Evening on the Street,” “Snow-covered Courtyard,” both 2019). A reminder that winter is not monochromatic—white. Summer images are undoubtedly full of warm, shimmering colors. It is characteristic that the artist often weaves the painted motifs into networks of colors and lines created by imagination; the images irritate the eyes with vivid bursts of color, their spots hypnotize. Gražys’s painting expression generally does not avoid irritating the eyes; it is multifaceted and multilayered, crossing several stylistics and painting strategies, from impressionistic flicker to geometric construction. Such painterly elements are evidence that the artist’s reactions to the environment and the interpretation of the seen and observed motif do not shy away from visual contrast, offering stylistic oppositions, an active dialogue of forms and colors (or mutual negation). If we hold the view that everything in nature is beautiful and true (nature “does not lie”), then the artist’s paintings present “another” opinion, reworked from nature. From stylistic contrasts and motif deconstruction arise the mentioned visual intrigue and strangeness. If we look only at the narrative of the images, Gražys’s painting somewhat resembles the inhabitant of Walden Woods, moralizing us on harmony with nature themes, his depiction of the reddish stumps of felled trees on the Castle Hill in Vilnius reminds of painful stories of environmental behavior, to which society responds sensitively (“Snow-covered Hill Foot,” 2023). But this social moral or mere tree stumps is just—repeating myself—a mere image that forces us to wake up from the comfortable sleep induced by life. We must, even without painted images, open our eyes and start thinking about how we live (also a moral).
Gražys’s depiction of nature is not a paradise of chirping birds in the forest; everything can be found and lost in the forest. Ecological existence is not alien to the artist, and Vilnius is also more than a romantic old town filled with church domes or cozy courtyards. The artist’s intention, and one offered to the viewer, is to stop and look closely at the environment we often pass by, not seeing. Sometimes the environment surprises, Vilnius seems playful, happier, sometimes repetitive, everyday, usual. Unexpectedly discovered images in the city or nature come to the viewer only thanks to the painter’s absorbed gaze into nature. It is this penetrating painter’s gaze, transferred into the paintings, that convinces us that summer can flow into snow, and Vilnius can blend into the forest.
