The Adomas Galdikas Museum was founded by collector Arnas Jurskis, who owns the largest private collection of Adomas Galdikas’ works. The collection includes around 500 paintings and graphic works. It contains a large number of female portraits, still lifes and especially valuable landscapes from his émigré period (Germany, France, the USA). There are also extensive collections of American abstractions, as well as previously unexhibited graphic works and studies. The collection also features the famous Portrait of the Jew Baruch (1925–1926), considered the most expensive work by Galdikas ever acquired at auction in Lithuania.
Adomas Galdikas (1893–1969) was one of the most prominent figures of modern Lithuanian art – a painter, graphic artist and scenographer – and one of the first to seek a synthesis of folk and modern art. His versatility is reflected in a wide creative field: throughout his life he painted extensively, worked in graphic art (printmaking, book illustration, posters, postage stamps and Lithuanian banknotes), designed more than 15 productions for the State Theatre and was also active as a teacher. He created still lifes and large decorative panels for Lithuanian pavilions at international exhibitions in Paris and New York. Galdikas mostly painted landscapes, while producing fewer portraits and figurative compositions.
His work was influenced by many 20th-century modern art movements. His curiosity, continuous interest in the global context of modern art, travels and visits to international exhibitions are reflected in various stylistic shifts in his work. Combining modern and folk art, Galdikas constantly searched for his own style – starting with realism, symbolism and impressionism and later evolving into a Neo-Romantic form of expressionism with elements of cubism, fauvism and Art Deco.
In 1944, Galdikas retreated to Germany – to Stade, Buxtehude and Freiburg – where a new stage in his landscape painting began. In search of better creative conditions, he moved to Paris in 1947, where his work developed within the field of lyrical abstraction. After exhibitions, the most favourable reviews appeared in the French press, highlighting the originality, lyricism and pantheistic qualities of his work.
In 1952, the artist moved to New York, opening a new phase in his artistic development. In America, Galdikas entered a new and unconventional artistic environment – an avant-garde centre where, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the New York School had formed, combining abstraction and expressionism. From 1953, his landscapes – already becoming more abstract since the Freiburg period – grew more concentrated and lyrically intense, while his American works became more monumental, visionary, rich in colour and characterized by simplified forms.
Galdikas actively participated in exhibitions both in Lithuania and abroad throughout his career, including his years in exile. He took part in group and solo exhibitions in Lithuania, Freiburg, Paris, New York, Amsterdam, Boston, Chicago and elsewhere. Considering the diversity, maturity and artistic value of his work, Galdikas is regarded as the second most important figure (after Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis) in the context of the Lithuanian national art school.
His works are held in private collections around the world and in various museums, including the M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art (Kaunas), the Lithuanian National Museum of Art (Vilnius), the Samogitian Art Museum, the Samogitian “Alka” Museum, the Latvian National Museum of Art, the Stieglitz Museum, the Musée d’Orsay (Paris) and others.