juozas zikaras Museum

Contacts
Address: J. Zikaro g. 3, LT-44261 Kaunas.
Tel. (+370 ~ 37) 22 32 05.
Mob. tel. (+370 ~ 652) 13 621.
E-mail: mkc.info@takas.lt

Information for Visitor

Opening hours:
Visits by arrangement. Mob. tel. (+370 ~ 652) 13 621.

Admission:
Entrance fee – 2 Lt;
Tour – 25 Lt (in Lithuanian), 40 Lt (in foreign language)
50% discount – schoolchildren, students, visitors with International student card (ISIC), military service, senior citizens.
Free entrance – preschool children, residents of children’s homes, disabled of I and II group, staff of museums of Lithuania, ICOM members, artists, students of art schools, students of Fine Art department of Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts and Vytautas Magnus University, journalists, AICA members, EU citizens September 1 through June 1 on Wednesdays.

Exposition
The museum was founded in the home of the sculptor, and designer of the monument “Laisvė” (Liberty), Juozas Zikaras (1881–1944).
On display are sketches of his well-known works, drawings, plaster model and sculptures.

Juozas Zikaras
J. Zikaras (1881–1944), sculptor, born in Paliukai, county of Panevėžys.
During 1904–1906 he studied in Vilnius at Trutnev’s Drawing School and in the evenings attended the drawing courses given by J. Montvila. His drawings were rated favourably and exhibited in students’ art shows. Still extant are his earliest works, which already surpass the average student’s efforts, among them his father’s bust, portrait in relief of poet Adam Mickiewicz and the statuettes Moteris (Woman) and Senis su kailiniais (Old Man in Fur Coat).
At that time the first exhibition of Lithuanian artists (Dec. 1906) was being organised in Vilnius. From St. Petersburg, Russia, where he had gone to continue his studies, Zikaras sent three small statuettes to be exhibited: Iš Tilžės (From Tilze), Mergaitė su gėlėmis (Girl with Flowers), and Bedarbis (Unemployed). None of these has survived. The sculpture Iš Tilžės portrayed a man with a sack on his back full of Lithuanian books banned by the Russian government.
In St. Petersburg he studied at first at the school of the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts (1907), and in 1910 he was accepted into the Academy of Fine Arts. He completed the course of study in 1915 and began work on his diploma sculpture but was mobilised for service into the Russian army. Although unfinished, his sculpture Motina (Mother) was included in the graduating students’ exhibit and was met with approval. Zikaras was called before the council of the Academy’s professors and presented with a diploma and a silver award (1916). After demobilisation he taught at secondary schools in Petrograd.
Having returned to Lithuania (1918), he taught drawing for many years at the Panevezys high school and the Pedagogic Seminary.
In 1929 he was invited to head the sculpture studio of the Art School in Kaunas, remaining in this position until 1940. When the school was reorganised into the Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts, he taught drawing here. After the second Soviet Union occupation of Lithuania, he was promoted to professor and was given the chairmanship of the sculpture and ceramics department, but in that same year he took his own life on Nov. 10, 1944.

Photo from Juozas Zikaras Museum