Viačeslavas Jevdokimovas-Karmalita (b. 1946) is a Ukrainian-born Lithuanian painter who graduated in fresco and mosaic from the Lithuanian State Art Institute in 1980; his works are held by the MO Museum in Vilnius. His dark, almost monochrome canvases reveal a rich range of colour and a living, breathing surface, built up and sculpted layer upon layer until the motif nearly dissolves – an intimate diary of changing light, dawn, dusk and the seasons.
Viačeslavas Jevdokimovas-Karmalita (b. 1946, Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine) is a Lithuanian painter who adopted the pseudonym Karmalita in memory of his mother, whose maiden name it was. He came to Vilnius in 1975 to study monumental art and graduated from the Lithuanian State Art Institute in fresco and mosaic in 1980, remaining in Lithuania ever since. For many years he worked largely in solitude, first in a studio in Užupis and later in an old homestead outside Vilnius, where an ascetic way of life gives him the concentration his painting requires. His dark, almost monochrome canvases reveal on closer inspection an extraordinary richness of colour and a living, breathing surface. For Karmalita, painting is both a meditative and a material process, often compared to the work of the French painter Eugène Leroy: he builds up paint layer upon layer, sculpting it until the real motif is almost dissolved. His pictures can be read as an intimate diary of changing light, of dawn and dusk and the passing seasons. Among his cycles are “Crucifixion”, “ASSISI” and a series of portraits of Igor Stravinsky, and he has also made large expressive drawings in coloured crayons. He is an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Arts and a member of the Lithuanian Artists’ Association, and his works are held by the MO Museum in Vilnius.
