Klaudijus Petrulis

"I aim at a painting that has a beginning and an end, just like a sentence."

Klaudijus Petrulis graduated from the Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts in 1971. He learned some valuable lessons there. "For instance," he says, "Antanas Gudaitis used to say that paint should be mixed on the palette rather than on the canvas, that brushes must be washed after each painting session and that the palette must be left clean after work. This is what I do, except that I paint with a palette knife, not with a brush." Unlearning was as important for his art as was learning. His father, Algirdas Petrulis, is a famous artist and no doubt Klaidijus learned a great deal from him and needed to discard much of what he had learned in order not to become a mere imitator. He spent the twenty years after graduation "destroying himself" as a painter and creating himself anew before emerging as the sensational artist he is today.

"The worst thing," he says, "is when an artist eats what's in the pot and starts scraping it clean. Now I don't want to do anything except paint. And I have ideas for a long time ahead." He said this in 1998 and was still saying it as recently as last year. He has no patience with a painting that shows nothing, does nothing and says nothing.

He has several exhibitions every year in Lithuania and has exhibited in Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Poland, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Austria, Germany, Canada and America.

His paintings are hard-edged semi-abstract Constructions, thought provoking and meaningful. They are indisputably masculine, strong and vigorously active. His unusual "brushwork", actually applied to the canvas with a palette knife directly from the tube, is the result of a determination to follow a distinctive path in art.

Paintings by this artist: