Title

Jomantas, Vincas.

Author

Butler, Roger.

Source

[Not applicable]

Publication date

2001

Type

Biography

Language

English

Country of context

Australia

Full text

Vincas Jomantas

Vincas Jomantas was born in Lithuania in 1922. He trained with his father, a leading Lithuanian sculptor, before going on to study at the Lithuanian School of Fine Arts in Vilnius from 1942-1944 and the Academy of Fine Art and School of Applied Art in Munich, West Germany from 1946 to 1948.

Jomantas arrived in Australia in 1949 and spent the following 11 years working in a variety of jobs; at a timber mill in Western Australia, as a house painter in country Victoria, in the furniture trade and as a draughtsman with the State Rivers and Water Supply Commission. In 1960 he became a lecturer in the Fine Arts Department of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. In that year he also became a founding member of the ‘Centre Five Group’ of sculptors, along with Clifford Last, Lenton Parr, and fellow émigré artists, Julius Kane, Teisutis Zikaras and lnge King.

This group’s commitment to creating works for public places revolutionised the role of sculpture in Australia. Jomantas's abstract sculptures ­— usually carved in wood or cast in metal — have a strong emphasis on textures and technical virtuosity. His forms are symbolic, the projection of complex human emotions into abstract forms.

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Last Updated

24 Mar 2023