Dolls
Dolls

Dolls

Author: Didžiokienė Barbora, 1895 - 1974

Created: 1922.

Material/technique: paper/tempera.

Dimensions: 46x55,8.

Signature: Didžiokienė / 1922 (in the bottom-right corner of the painting).

The artist Barbora Didžiokienė (1896–1976) was born in Saint Petersburg and came to Lithuania in 1921. After a few years she debuted in the exhibition organised by the Plastic Art Division of the Lithuanian Artists’ Society where the pictures with figures of dolls were among the first compositions close in style to Art Deco. In her diary Didžiokienė described her idea to sew the characters for her future paintings: ‘As I was not rich and had no money to buy fabrics for the background of pictures (draperies) to paint still lifes with vases, flowers and fruit, I decided to sew dolls and dress them in various clothes. I even created stage settings of rooms and gardens myself and then painted scenes from the life of dolls. Actually, my dolls were not very pretty, but later heads of dolls manufactured abroad appeared in our shops. They were absolutely wonderful, and therefore I only wrapped the ‘skeleton’ in a rag body and then attached a purchased head to it. I tried to keep the exact proportions and by bending the wire inside a doll I could achieve any posture as the dolls were affixed to special stands.’  

Reference: Barbora Didžiokienė, Memories of the little artist, compiled by Ramutė Rachlevičiūtė, translation from Russian by Ona Mickevičiūtė, Vilnius, 2015, vol. 2, p. 133).

Exhibitions: “More Than Just Beauty: The Image of Woman in the LAWIN collection”, 12 October – 11 November 2012, National Gallery of Art; Vilnius  Exhibition of the Fine Arts Collection of Edmundas Armoška "Outcrops of Lithuanian Art 16th–21th Centuries" 2008 July 3 - August 31, Lithuanian Art Museum, Vilnius; Exhibition "Personal. Lithuanian Women's Art 1918-1940", 2017, 14 April - 4 June 2017, National Gallery of Art, Vilnius.

Published: "More Than Just Beauty. The Image of Woman in the LAWIN collection." Compiled by G. Jankevičiūtė. Vilnius, LAWIN, 2012, Kat. No. 51; "Outcrops of Lithuanian Art 16th–21th Centuries", Vilnius  Exhibition of the Fine Arts Collection of Edmundas Armoška, Vilnius: Lithuanian Art Museum; Barbora Didžiokienė. "Memories of the little artist II". Vilnius: Vilnius University Press, 2015, P. 317; "Kaunas-Vilnius 1918-1945”, The Art collection of the law firm Ellex Valiunas. Compilars D. Barcytė, dr. I. Burbaitė. Vilnius, 2021, P. 192.