Nijolė Dirvianskytė

Nijolė Dirvianskytė is one of the most prominent representatives of Lithuanian naïve art. She began painting at the age of thirty-six. By that time, she was already a professional chemist and scientist, had earned an academic degree, and was successfully working in a laboratory.

Nijolė Dirvianskytė’s name is well known among Lithuanian folk artists and art enthusiasts. She frequently participates in exhibitions and plein-air painting events and has been a laureate of the Adomas Varnas Painting Competition. She has been granted the status of an artist and has been mentioned numerous times in introductory articles in periodicals and exhibition catalogues, as well as in books. Her works have been exhibited at prestigious folk-art exhibitions in the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania (2004), at the 40th-anniversary exhibition of the Lithuanian Folk Artists’ Union (2006), at the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in Moscow, in the Jurgis Baltrušaitis House (2007), and elsewhere. Her work reflects the entire environment surrounding her—the city and the countryside, work and leisure, family and flowers, Siberia and Lithuania, impressions from her travels, and, above all, nature and the peace and harmony it provides in summer and winter. Some of her most beautiful works are devoted to blooming and the blessings of nature.

Nijolė Dirvianskytė was born on November 1, 1944, in the village of Sakučiai, in an unknown homestead abandoned by the Germans near the Nemunas River, on the way to Germany, where her parents were fleeing from Skuodas to escape the return of the Soviet army and deportation beyond the Arctic Circle. “Those who assisted at my birth were my father, an economist; my uncle Adomas, a lawyer; and his wife, my mother’s sister Monika, an artist,” the folk artist recalls in her biography.