Shileika, Ionas Vintso

(Jonas Vincas Sileika). Born June 20 (July 2), 1883, in the village of Jadagonej, in what is now Kaunas Raion, Lithuanian SSR; died Oct. 27, 1960, in Kaunas. Soviet painter. People’s Artist of the Lithuanian SSR (1958).

Shileika attended the Catholic University of Valparaiso in Chile (1905–06), the Institute of Art in Chicago (1906–10), and the art school of G. Grober and the Academy of Arts in Munich (1911–13). He worked in the USA from 1915 until 1921 when he returned to Lithuania. He taught at the Kaunas Institute of Applied and Decorative Art from 1944 to 1951 and at other educational institutions. He was known for his generalized, often symbolic landscapes with appealing color schemes, for example, The Nemanus River at Bruze (1914, M. K. Čiurlionis Art Museum, Kaunas). He also painted expressive, highly individualized portraits, mostly of Lithuanian cultural figures, such as J. Naialis (1924, M. K. Čiurlionis Art Museum) and Z. Petravičius (1950, Art Museum of the Lithuanian SSR, Vilnius).