Klaipėda City Municipality
Klaipėda
art gallery and branch of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art
Liepų g. 33, LT-92145 Klaipėda
55.71460, 21.14030
1-2 hours; longer with temporary exhibitions and educational activities
a quiet afternoon in central Klaipėda or a rainy seaside day
Klaipėda Picture Gallery, LNDM Pranas Domšaitis Gallery
Pranas Domšaitis Gallery: Klaipėda's art address on Liepų Street
Pranas Domšaitis Gallery is one of Klaipėda's most important art sites and a branch of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art, or LNDM. It brings together the permanent Pranas Domšaitis exhibition, Lithuanian art halls, temporary exhibitions, educational activities, and the Art Cognition Centre, while the gallery itself stands in Klaipėda's historic urban area on Liepų Street.
The main address is Liepų g. 33, but the gallery story extends through an ensemble of four connected buildings at Liepų g. 29, 31, 33, and 35. It is a strong stop for visitors who want more in Klaipėda than sea and old town: a quieter encounter with painting, graphic art, sculpture, and museum education.
From Klaipėda Picture Gallery to the Pranas Domšaitis name
The gallery was founded in 1970 as the Klaipėda Picture Gallery. According to LNDM, it opened on June 1, 1973, in a two-storey late-nineteenth- to early-twentieth-century building at Liepų g. 35, which had been assigned to the gallery in 1971 and had previously housed a kindergarten. The gallery was designed by architect Zigmas Rutkauskas and the interiors by designer Kazimieras Miežinis. The first exhibition combined old and contemporary Lithuanian art with nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Western European and Russian painting.
In 1978, after four buildings were joined into one complex, a new 1,800 sq m exhibition opened; it more clearly presented old Lithuanian painting and graphic art linked with the Vilnius Art School and first-half twentieth-century work linked with the Kaunas Art School. After the 1990 reorganization, most of the exhibition was devoted to contemporary Lithuanian painting, graphic art, and sculpture. In 2001 the Pranas Domšaitis works exhibition and Pranas Domšaitis Cultural Centre opened, and in 2004 the gallery was named after him. That was not a formal renaming but a move toward the heritage of an artist from Lithuania Minor.
Pranas Domšaitis: an Expressionist from Lithuania Minor
Pranas Domšaitis, born Franz Carl Wilhelm Domscheit in 1880 and deceased in 1965, was born in the village of Kropyna in Lithuania Minor and is one of the most important representatives of Lithuanian Expressionism. He studied at the Königsberg Art Academy, trained in Lovis Corinth's studio in Berlin, visited Edvard Munch, and after the Nazi regime removed his works from museums and labelled them degenerate art, he worked in Austria and later in Cape Town, South Africa, where he died.
Domšaitis' work is marked by intense colour, generalized forms, black contour, and a mystical mood, with the motif of road and journey appearing often. After the artist's death, the Lithuanian Foundation in the United States bought most of his works from his widow Adelheid Armhold and donated them to Lithuania. That is why Klaipėda can present not a single name but a coherent body of work by a European-scale artist.
665 Domšaitis works: the largest collection in the world
LNDM information states that the museum holds the world's largest collection of Pranas Domšaitis' work: 665 oil paintings, pastels, watercolours, drawings, and prints, donated to Lithuania by the Lithuanian Foundation in the United States. This distinguishes Klaipėda from other Lithuanian art museums. The permanent painter's exhibition was installed on July 26, 2001, in the oldest part of the gallery, Liepų g. 35.
Visitors should check which halls and exhibitions are open during their trip, because the permanent exhibition is updated from time to time and supplemented with temporary exhibitions and educational programmes. Works by Domšaitis are also held by the National M. K. Čiurlionis Museum of Art in Kaunas and by museums abroad.
Four historic Liepų Street buildings and former Alexanderstrasse
LNDM notes that the gallery ensemble consists of four buildings connected into one complex, at Liepų g. 29, 31, 33, and 35, all listed in the register of immovable cultural heritage. The plots were planned in the late nineteenth century, and the buildings were constructed in the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century on the eastern stretch of Liepų Street, then called Alexanderstrasse and later Otto Bottcher Street. The authentic facades of three buildings, Liepų g. 31, 33, and 35, reflect typical forms of old Klaipėda architecture.
Individual buildings have their own stories: the brick house at Liepų g. 31 was built as an eye clinic by ophthalmologist Edwinas Heinas, so its windows are larger than those of neighbouring houses; the three-storey building at Liepų g. 33, with neo-Baroque traits, also belonged to E. Heinas in the first half of the twentieth century; the red-brick Liepų g. 35 is an example of Materialstil and Heimatstil currents. The Pranas Domšaitis Gallery is therefore itself part of Klaipėda's urban memory.
How to visit: hours and tickets
Give the gallery at least an hour, or up to two hours if you visit temporary exhibitions or read the Domšaitis exhibition carefully. Families should check educational activities, because the gallery has had an Art Cognition Centre tradition since 2002. On Liepų Street, the gallery combines easily with the Clock Museum, Klaipėda Old Town, and Sculpture Park.
At the time of research, the LNDM opening-hours page listed the gallery as open Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday 10:00-18:00, Thursday 12:00-20:00, Sunday 10:00-16:00, and closed on Monday. Adult tickets were then 5 EUR and concession tickets 2.50 EUR. Check the LNDM page before travelling because museum hours and prices change.
