Antanas Andziulis

Antanas Andziulis was born in Kaunas in 1960. His artistic path began at the Kaunas J. Naujalis Secondary School of Art, now called the Kaunas Art Gymnasium. He went on to study painting at the Vilnius Art Institute from 1978 to 1984, where he received formal training and honed his skills during these pivotal years.

Andziulis’s creativity was first shaped by his family environment—his father took up painting following World War II, and his mother worked with textiles. This artistic household laid the groundwork for his early ventures into the visual arts. His growth continued at the art school, where he was mentored by the notable pedagogue Algirdas Lukštas, and at the Vilnius Art Institute, he was guided by esteemed figures including Kostas Dereškevičius, Arvydas Šaltenis, Leopoldas Surgailis, and Professor Vladas Karatajus.

At the outset, Andziulis concentrated on depicting tangible forms within real spaces in his paintings. As the years passed, his approach evolved, and by 1993, he had embraced expressive abstraction. A new phase emerged in 2010, this one marked by geometric abstraction. Crucial encounters—particularly with Arūnas Jonuškis, who opened his eyes to the expressive qualities of color and the meridians of the human body, and Modrius Tenisonas, whose perspectives on field and structure were influential—were instrumental in shaping this evolution. The interplay of color tension and the thought-provoking connection between a work and its title remain central to Andziulis’s creative ideology.

Beyond his pursuits as a painter, Andziulis has played a role in art education. From 1986 to 1990, he served as a teacher and as chairman of the methodological circle at Kaunas St. Žukas Technical School of Applied Arts. He also taught painting and drawing part-time at the Kaunas branch of the Vilnius Art Institute from 1989 to 1991, and later continued teaching at the Kaunas Art Gymnasium from 1991 to 1993. Since 1984, his works have appeared in group exhibitions, and starting in 1993, he has also mounted solo painting shows—offering the public an ever-evolving artistic vision.