Exhibition

South Africa is a country on the shores of which the Indian and Atlantic Oceans converge, and the majority of the population of modern Lithuania is still an unknown land. XX a. pr. South Africa,thousands of kilometers away from Europe, like Australia or South America, has been a popular destination for emigrants from all over Europe in search of an easier or safer life. Lithuanian Jews sought refuge mainly from the anti-Semitic policies pursued in the territory of tsarist Lithuania in Palestine and South Africa. In the latter about 80 percent. The population of Jewish origin consists of people whose ancestors are of Lithuanian descent. Rhona Gorvy (maiden name - Penn) was born in 1921. Springse, South Africa. It was not until Rhona was born that a tragedy occurred in the family: her father, grandfather and uncle died. The girl was raised by a widowed mother, Hana Miriam, and a grandmother, Sarah, born in Plungė (who came to South Africa with her husband, Jakov Šulman from Plungė). Mimi's husband Hiler Penn, the father of whom Rhonai never knew, was from Švenčionys. An interesting fact in the family biography is that Rhona was related to two famous cousins from the father who lived in the United States: Irving Penn, a U.S. fashion photographer, and Arthur Penn, a director. Rhona has been inclined to art from an early age, as she herself said: “I think that tendency is already given at birth. It's like a magnet pulling you to want it or not. " 1944 Rhona married Victor Gorvy and graduated from the University of Witwatersrand. Growing up in Johannesburg, the girl did not give up her natural vocation to be an artist either. She studied art and also attended drawing classes at the George Boys School of Fine Arts, where she was taught by Giusseppe Cattaneo, Joyce Leonard and Elizabeth Harrington. Her field of work was wide: from graphics, paintings to sculptures. Most of the 2016 exhibition Rhona Gorvy: Creative Insights Her artistic legacy, which reached the Vilnius Gaon State Jewish Museum in the summer of 2006, includes graphic works, sketches and sculptures. Symbolic - 2016 July 13 was the day he died in South Africa at about 95 years old. an artist who did not stop creating until the last days. The cycle "Souls of Trees", created in a mixed technique with impressive formats, was born in the last years of her life. Another area of Rhona's work is the poems she started writing as a child. It has survived in 1931. a notebook with poems written by a ten-year-old girl. Later, poems became an integral part of artistic expression, helping to understand the creator’s insights. Rhona experimented with graphics: creating engravings using aquatint, drypoint techniques, as well as monotypes or mixed media works. Loved the thematic cycles: "Dreams and Dizziness" (focusing on drug issues), "Life from the Life Series" (where birds become symbols of the flow of human life), "Swinging" (dedicated to the relationship between a man and a woman). He also created individual, in-depth works.Family ties, origins, and history were also paramount to the artist of Jewish descent. "[...] in the first years of my life, I felt the pain from which my mother and her family fled Lithuania, as well as the nquenchable longing of my father, whom I had never known," Rhona admitted. The artist has also survived the tragedy of World War II in Europe and her family, and later apartheid policies in South Africa: "[...] we can no longer wear 'pink glasses' when we look at this man-made darkness." Rhona understood human nature: he realized the dark layer of human existence, the vulnerability of man.