Zavadskienė Elena
E. N. Zavadskienė was born in 1943 in Odessa (Ukraine). In 1962 she graduated from the Odessa Theatrical Art College, majoring in make-up artist. Since 1970 she has been actively participating in exhibitions in Lithuania and abroad. Since 1975 she has been a member of the Lithuanian Artists’ Union. E. N. Zavadskienė’s works have been acquired by the Lithuanian National Museum of Art, the Lithuanian Art Foundation, the Lithuanian Theatre, Film and Music Museum, and the Vilnius Gaon State Jewish Museum. The artist’s works are in the Kaliningrad Art Gallery (Russia) and the Tama Art University Museum in Tokyo (Japan), as well as in private collections in Lithuania, the Netherlands, Germany, France, the USA, Belgium, the UAE, Poland, and Israel.
The artist began to draw colleagues a long time ago, at the very beginning of her creative career. At the 1966 republican exhibition of fine arts, the artist exhibited a portrait of Vytautas Bačėnas (1925-2010), the author of the original Lithuanian font. Although it was Elena Nona’s debut, the work, like the other drawing exhibited there, was immediately acquired by the Lithuanian Art Museum.
The earliest portraits of Dalia Kasčiūnaitė, Gražina Didelytė and Galina Petrova were created in 1977 at the exhibition. In the same year, impressive portraits of painters Leopoldas Surgailis, Leonas Katinas, Jonas Čeponis, Marija Bankauskaitė, Eglė Kučaitė, Gražina Didelytė were painted, which have not been forgotten over the years.
Elena Nona Zavadskienė is a lover of people, an expert in human characters, and when asked about the essence of a person, she finds beautiful words to describe each of her portraits. When asked why she did not paint a portrait of one charming older generation artist, she smiled and said: “because she is like a ray of sunlight, like flowing water – you cannot easily catch her. Her gaze is sharp, hard, and her smile is soft. You need to find a way to combine it in one drawing…”
The various drawing techniques that the artist chooses help her better reveal the character of the person being portrayed, so T.K. Valaitis, M. P. Vilutis, G. Didelytė, A. Žvilius, A. Jacovskytė were drawn in charcoal; sangina – I. Žviliuvienė; J. Bagdonavičiūtė – sangina with tempera, Vyt. Jurkūnas – in ink and tempera, pastel – J. Čeponis, L. Katinas, M. Bankauskaitė, J. Ludavičienė, G. Vitartaitė; in acrylic – V. Antanavičius, in colored ink – D. Kasčiūnaitė’s portraits.
For the artist, drawing is an integral part of her work. The artist has been drawing faces since she can remember, and no matter what she does, such drawings exist in various forms for her, whether they are images of specific people, imaginary characters, or perhaps heroes of future compositions…
Ramutė Rachlevičiūtė