VILNIUS.- The Vytautas Kasiulis Museum of Art of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art opened its new exhibition “Nijolė Šivickas de Mockus. The Universe from a Spiral”. It is the first comprehensive Lithuanian presentation of the oeuvre by Nijolė Šivickas de Mockus brought from Columbia where the ceramic artist and sculptor built her career and name.
Visitors will see a portion of the entire artist’s legacy, donated to Lithuania by the artist’s family – over 200 art pieces, sculptures, paintings, graphic works and drawings. The collection travelled thousands of miles from Nijolė Šivickas’s studio in Bogotá and reached the Port of Klaipėda early this year.
‘The art by Nijolė Šivickas de Mockus is one of the most amazing artistic phenomena of the Lithuanian diaspora. Born in Lithuania, after a year of studies in Germany, she created her unique artistic world in Columbia, fusing the experience of European modernism, the inspiration from pre-Columbian cultures and her distinct philosophically subtle perception of the man and the medium. Today it becomes increasingly obvious that she deserves a place not only in the history of art of Columbia, but in the history of world art. The exhibition presented by the Vytautas Kasiulis Museum of Art is a great opportunity to the Lithuanian audience to rediscover this unique artist. The decision by the artist’s family to donate 209 artworks by Nijolė Šivickas to the Lithuanian National Museum of Art is equally consequential and deserves our greatest gratitude. It is one of the most significant donations made to our collections over the recent years, which, in a symbolic way, brings the art by Šivickas back into the orbit of Lithuanian culture, ensuring the accessibility of her legacy to the future generations, scholars and all lovers of art,” the director general of the LNMA Dr Arūnas Gelūnas has stated.
‘The Vytautas Kasiulis Museum of Art, as a division of the LNMA dedicated to the art of the Lithuanian diaspora, takes great honour in presenting to the public, the art by one of the female émigré artists Nijolė Šivickas de Mockus, who stands out through her visionary sensibility and expressiveness. We owe the debt of gratitude to the family of the artist for this generous present,’ the director of the Vytautas Kasiulis Museum of Art of the LNMA shares her excitement.
From the banks of the Nevėžis River to the Andes
Born in the Kėdainiai district, near the Nevėžis River, the future artist grew up in independent Lithuania, but her youth was marked by the events of World War II. In 1944, as the second Soviet occupation approached, she fled to Germany with her sister Aldona. There she worked in a metalworking factory, but even under difficult conditions, she never stopped drawing; she was later admitted to the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart. During her studies, influenced by postwar European artistic ideas and the revival of the Bauhaus tradition, she created drawings, portraits, landscapes, and her first more abstract works. While living in Germany, Nijolė met her future husband Alfonsas Mockus, also a Lithuanian. In 1950, the family set out on a long journey across the Atlantic. They settled in Bogotá where Šivickas started working as an illustrator. In 1955, her first solo exhibition, held at the National Library of Colombia, received positive critical reviews, but the artist herself felt she had not yet found her own artistic voice. In her search for her true identity, she turned to clay – a material that would define all of her subsequent creative work. After being introduced to ceramic techniques by the Lithuanian artist Juozas Bagdonas, she began creating distinctive sculptural forms.
After her husband’s tragic death in 1966, Nijolė took sole responsibility for her daughter Ismena and son Antanas. The “AkmuO” studio that she founded became a significant centre for design, crafts, and artistic creation. Over time, she turned more decisively toward the visual arts, and her creative work began to be dominated by organic, nature-inspired forms. Her later years’ exhibitions held in different countries, revealed a mature phase in the artist’s work, in which sculptures and objects merged into spatial compositions, which the artist herself referred to as installations.
The encounter with the artist’s universe created of nature-inspired forms
In over six decades of her creative career, Nijolė Šivickas de Mockus gave over twenty solo exhibitions and took part in more than a hundred group events. Her emerging idiom was mainly inspired by pre-Columbian art, over time the artist abandoned the expressionist manner of her early works, forging her own world of organic forms and symbols. Her art weaves together nature-inspired motifs – moons, gaps, riverbeds, angles, indentations and their interconnections in space. Her oeuvre is distinguished by its visionary thinking, expressiveness, inner freedom, a sensitive relationship with the medium, and a reflection on universal human experiences.
The artist left behind a rich legacy of drawings, paintings, sculptures, and installations that blend the cultural experiences of Lithuania, Europe, and Latin America. She is today regarded as one of the most important artists of Lithuanian origin in Latin America and a significant figure in the cultural history of the Lithuanian diaspora. Laura Moreno Barbosa, curator of Nijolė’s exhibition and a scholar of her legacy, encourages viewers to perceive her creation as a cyclical and spiralling phenomenon: ‘This exhibition presents the artwork which have become landmarks of the stages of Nijolė Šivickas de Mockus’s artistic path. It reflects the encounter of different cultures embraced by her art. Inspired by the sensibilities of the indigenous American peoples, the artist invites on a journey of discovery, where, reflected in fire and clay, we rediscover our self – from the mountains to the plains.’
The exhibition “Nijolė Šivickas de Mockus. The Universe from a Spiral” at the Vytautas Kasiulis Museum of Art of the LNMA will run until 7th February, 2027. Visitors are invited to discover the universe created by the artist, where the natural rhythms, the memory of archaic cultures and the artist’s personal visions are moulded together in clay and sculpture pieces, also captured in drawings. Tours, education workshops and other events accompanying the exhibition will facilitate the familiarity with the life of Nijolė Šivickas de Mockus and the understanding of her art.
