A Woman’s Back. From the series ‘Journey of Being’

The Second World War profoundly altered the course of the life of Vytautas Kašuba (1915–1997). Once a promising young sculptor and respected teacher at Kaunas Art School, he became a refugee, displaced and homeless, while also suffering from a serious illness. He survived the war only thanks to the determination and resourcefulness of his wife, the young and enterprising artist Aleksandra Kasuba, who was fluent in both German and English. After fleeing Lithuania, she managed to reach a hospital every ten days to ensure her husband could undergo complex pneumothorax treatment. Kašuba’s personal experience of vulnerability, combined with the collective trauma of Lithuanian exile, profoundly shaped his artistic vision, directing it towards the themes of displacement, journey, exile, and the pain of human existence. One of his basreliefs, now in the collection, portrays a double image of the same figure, like a visual echo, evoking a sense of presence in two spaces at once. The work captures the dual experience of the refugee, who belongs to both the lost homeland and an unfamiliar new land, suspended between the past and the future. Kašuba later integrated this motif into his major bronze wall relief Exile (also known as Journey, 1984), now in the collection of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art (LNDM S-2035). He returned to the theme again in the monumental diptych Journey of Being (1984–1987, LNDM S-2615, S-2616), which is composed of 26 reliefs.

Text author Laura Petrauskaitė

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album MORE THAN JUST BEAUTY (2012). Compiler and author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė, ARTISTS ON THE MOVE (2025). Compiler and text author Laura Petrauskaitė
Expositions: “More Than Just Beauty: The Image of Woman in the LAWIN collection”, 12 October – 11 November 2012, National Gallery of Art, Vilnius

The Second World War profoundly altered the course of the life of Vytautas Kašuba (1915–1997). Once a promising young sculptor and respected teacher at Kaunas Art School, he became a refugee, displaced and homeless, while also suffering from a serious illness. He survived the war only thanks to the determination and resourcefulness of his wife, the young and enterprising artist Aleksandra Kasuba, who was fluent in both German and English. After fleeing Lithuania, she managed to reach a hospital every ten days to ensure her husband could undergo complex pneumothorax treatment. Kašuba’s personal experience of vulnerability, combined with the collective trauma of Lithuanian exile, profoundly shaped his artistic vision, directing it towards the themes of displacement, journey, exile, and the pain of human existence. One of his basreliefs, now in the collection, portrays a double image of the same figure, like a visual echo, evoking a sense of presence in two spaces at once. The work captures the dual experience of the refugee, who belongs to both the lost homeland and an unfamiliar new land, suspended between the past and the future. Kašuba later integrated this motif into his major bronze wall relief Exile (also known as Journey, 1984), now in the collection of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art (LNDM S-2035). He returned to the theme again in the monumental diptych Journey of Being (1984–1987, LNDM S-2615, S-2616), which is composed of 26 reliefs.

Text author Laura Petrauskaitė

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album MORE THAN JUST BEAUTY (2012). Compiler and author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė, ARTISTS ON THE MOVE (2025). Compiler and text author Laura Petrauskaitė
Expositions: “More Than Just Beauty: The Image of Woman in the LAWIN collection”, 12 October – 11 November 2012, National Gallery of Art, Vilnius