Aloyzas Smilingis

Aloyzas Smilingis is a lithuanian modernism classic - a sculptor and a painter. The artist has been participating in exhibitions since 1964, has organized more than 10 solo exhibitions and participated in more than 30 group exhibitions all around the world - in Switzerland, USA, Latvia, Germany, Russia. There are also a big number of works exhibited in public spaces, which can be seen in various cities of Lithuania and abroad. A. Smilingis works belong to collections in Lithuania and the USA, as well as private collections in Australia, Great Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands, USA, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Russia, Japan and Lithuania.

Artist Aloyzas Smilingis, better known to fans and collectors in Lithuania and abroad as Elis, was born in a small village in the west Lithuania, in 1938. Without any professional training, he entered the Vilnius Art Institute to study graphic art, but he did not limit himself to just that, he also took up painting and sculpture. After studying graphic art, he settled in Didžiokų chapel near Molėtai, where he began to work intensively with sculpture. The artist's life has been colorful - he traveled to New York to meet the famous painter Willem de Kooning, was the first one to take up metalization technique which was then a completely pioneering move, started bronze casting and after studying this technology installed his own foundry. As A. Smilingis himself puts it best: " I like to paint and so I paint. Creative process is important – dive and jazz with the colours… This is very personal, it is my inner life, my passion."

Information source: Aloyzas Smilingis. The Artist.