‘I’m Always on the Go’ — The Painter Franz Domscheit / Pranas Domšaitis (1880-1965)

Searching, wandering, not arriving—this is how the person and art of Franz Domscheit/Pranas Domšaitis can be characterized. Born into a German-Lithuanian family as the son of a farmer and innkeeper, it was primarily his Lithuanian origins that interested him. The early landscape and cultural impressions of his homeland, Prussian-Lithuania, at the interface of German and Lithuanian culture, shaped his work throughout his life. Landscape is one of the painter’s main themes, and he is primarily perceived as an expressionist. After Domscheit was branded a representative of “degenerate art” during the Nazi era, he retreated to the Alps and into internal exile. In 1949 he emigrated to South Africa. The lecture is by Jan Rüttinger, deputy museum director and curator of art at the East Prussian State Museum in Lüneburg, Germany.