{"product_id":"1920s-adomas-varnas-oil-painting-attributed-war-allegory","title":"1920s Adomas Varnas Oil Painting | Attributed War Allegory","description":"\u003cp\u003eHere we have a canvas that stops people mid step. A robed, haloed Christ stands over a kneeling soldier stripped to the waist, his head buried in his own arm, while a tank burns low on the horizon behind them and two aircraft cut across a smoke colored sky reduced to little more than crossed brushstrokes. It is not a comfortable picture, and it was not painted to be one. Intensity beyond words. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe canvas is signed A. Varnas in the lower right corner. The stretcher bar on the reverse carries a fuller note in matching block lettering, Adomas Varnas 1927. Varnas was a real figure in Lithuanian art, a Kaunas based painter, photographer, and educator whose career spanned Vilnius, Geneva, and eventually Chicago, and 1927 happened to be the year Kaunas mounted a retrospective marking his first twenty years of work. Whether the hand behind that retrospective also painted this canvas is something the physical evidence supports without settling outright, and we would rather say that plainly than oversell it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNow the painting. A robed, haloed Christ figure stands behind a kneeling man stripped to the waist, head bowed into his own arm, spent or grieving or both. Behind them a tank burns low on the horizon, a rifle lies dropped in the dirt, and two aircraft cross a smoke colored sky reduced to little more than crossed brushstrokes. It reads as a war allegory from the years right after Lithuania fought its way to independence, when a generation of painters across the region were figuring out what to do with that much grief in oil. It is a stranger, heavier picture than the ones that usually carry this signature, and we would rather hand it to you with that question still open than pretend it is closed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe antique painting measures 27” x 23”. The canvas carries its age honestly. Along one edge the tacking margin has frayed and pulled loose from the stretcher, the reverse shows scattered old foxing and staining, and the paint film has developed a fine network of craquelure consistent with a canvas closing in on a century old. Nothing here has been restored or repainted, so what arrives is exactly what nearly one hundred years left behind, wear included. Please see all pics as they are part of the description. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe are listing this piece as attributed to Adomas Varnas rather than by him, because that is where the evidence honestly lands. The materials, the inscription, and the letterforms in the signature hold up well against confirmed examples of his work. The subject veers from his routine focus. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe painting came out of an old Chicago estate.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI ship FedEx to street addresses in the continental USA only (no PO Boxes). Free shipping on the amazing painting. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIntense on upper levels. Unreal.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mad Van Antiques","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43376733159501,"sku":null,"price":800.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0116\/3637\/5610\/files\/IMG_0242.jpg?v=1786158460","url":"https:\/\/madvanantiques.com\/products\/1920s-adomas-varnas-oil-painting-attributed-war-allegory","provider":"Mad Van Antiques","version":"1.0","type":"link"}