Šilkaitis Stasys

Artist Stanislovas Šilkaitis was born on May 9, 1927, in the village of Paliepiai, Ariogala parish, in a farmer’s family. He was the youngest of four brothers. His father, Marcelius Šilkaitis, had emigrated to the USA in the first decade of the 20th century, where he worked in coal mines in Pennsylvania. After his father returned to Lithuania, the family moved to Ariogala, where he opened a grocery store. During World War II, the family was scattered, his father died in 1939, and two brothers moved to the West. In 1946, S. Šilkaitis graduated from Kėdainiai 2nd Gymnasium. In the same year, he began studying at the Kaunas State Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts.
He studied with famous artists of the time who taught at the institute: J. Vaitis, R. Kalpokas, L. Kazoka, who rated the young artist as good or very good. He completed his summer internship with L. Kazokas, . Žmuidzinavičius, J. Buračas, F. Ušinskaitė. Since he came from a social class that began to be persecuted during the Soviet era and two brothers had left for the West, he was expelled from the institute in his last year of studies. Most likely, for the same reasons, he was not accepted into the Lithuanian Artists’ Union. He got a job as an artist at the “Inkaros” rubber products factory. In his free time, he painted landscapes, portraits, still lifes, and drew cartoons. He enjoyed trips to nature, looking for a suitable image for painting. In the surviving booklet printed in 1957, he drew friendly caricatures of members of the Kaunas Writers’ Club. S. Šilkaitis’s works were exhibited at republican and Kaunas artists’ exhibitions. He collaborated with Kaunas artists A. Martinaitis, S. Krasauskas, V. Povilaitis, M. Ostrauskas, P. Stauskas. He taught children the art of drawing in the children’s art studio that operated for a time at the “Ankaras” factory. He retired after Lithuania regained independence. But due to his deteriorating health, he had to give up his beloved trips to nature, rarely touched a brush, and occasionally corrected the works of his youth. Stanislovas Šilkaitis died in 1995. In May, he was in the hospital at the age of 68. The creative legacy of the artist Stanislovas Šilkaitis consists of about three hundred works. These are landscapes, still lifes, portraits, cartoons, and several works of art on the walls of public buildings.