Piotiotr Sergijewicz

After the war, Piotiotr Sergijewicz (1900–1984) received a lot of attention from official art critics, who recognised his extraordinary skill in academic painting. This artist, who was born in Byelorussia, began his career in interwar Vilnius, where the school of Vilnius Neo- Classicism formed by Ludomir Sleńdziński prevailed. He participated in the activities of the St Luke’s Guild, and painted pictures for churches and portraits on commission. He received many orders, although he was considered backward-looking by more modern contemporaries, because of his clear sympathy for the 19th-century tradition of realism. He was relegated to that category of artist by Khrushchev’s liberalisation, which permitted an injection of modernism into Lithuanian art. His Byelorussian origins, of which he was very proud, caused him to be considered an outsider in Soviet Lithuania.

Reference: Art album "More Than Just Beauty. The Image of Woman in the LAWIN collection." Compiled by G. Jankevičiūtė. Vilnius, LAWIN, 2012, P.144.