The greatest number of politically motivated carpets, ceramic panels and stained glass works were created during the period of strictest censorship, at the juncture of the 1940s and 1950s.

 

Ceramics dominated the other applied art fields in the initial post-war period. What new developments were there in this field when compared to the advances of the pre-war years? Firstly, more attention was paid to representative works. Alongside the predominant modest, moderately decorated vases, small vases, candle holders and animal style pieces, there now appeared new creations, previously unseen in Lithuania, such as enormous commemorative vessels, reminiscent of ancient Greek amphoras, decorated with ideological scenes and Soviet symbols. These were created by Birutė Zygmantaitė (a vase entitled Šešiolika respublikų [Sixteen Republics], 1949), Julija Kačinskaitė-Vyšniauskienė (Pionieriai [Pioneers], 1950), Albinas Pivoriūnas (Derliaus atidavimas valstybei [Presenting the Harvest to the State], 1950). Artists that began their creative journeys in those days explain that they and their colleagues tried to avoid "ideological" works (they felt ashamed to undertake them), but they nevertheless presented opportunities to earn a living and perhaps even prove one's loyalty to the Soviet government. Untrustworthy artists were viewed with particular suspicion by the authorities.

 

The emergence of a new artistic genre, ceramic panel work, was encouraged by the construction of the Lithuanian SSR pavilion at the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition in Moscow (later merged into the overall campus of the All-Union People's Agricultural Exhibition, known by the Russian acronym VDNKh). From 1952 to 1953, the most prominent Lithuanian ceramists—Liudvikas Strolis, Jonas Mikėnas, Mykolas Vriublauskas and Teodora Slyvauskaitė-Miknevičienė—assisted by sculptors Juozas Kėdainis, Jadvyga Mozūraitė-Klemkienė, Bronius Vyšniauskas, and Napoleonas Petrulis, decorated the façade and interior of the Stalinist architecture with realistic figures, agriculturally themed panels, and adorned the building with ornamental friezes, rosettes, and intricate cornices. These works most clearly corresponded to the demands of socialist realism: displaying the ideals of a new life and presented in an uplifting and optimistic language that was readily accessible to the viewing public.

 

Socialist realist scenes made their way into ceramic works as well. Aldona Ličkutė's dissertation piece, Pirmūnės pasveikinimas (Congratulating the Most Productive Laborer), commissioned (under the guidance of Teodora Miknevičienė) for the interior of the Lithuanian Art Institute, depicting a ceremony honoring the best worker on a collective farm, was full of socialist realist painting elements: a propagandistic narrative, a correct, closed composition, a well-developed spatial structure, a naturalistic style, unnaturally animated movements by its characters, and faces beaming with joy.

 

Small sculptures, made popular during the inter-war period, also made a resurgence, primarily in the form of animals and figurines of children playing or tending to animals. These types of compositions were designed for exhibitions and ordered for mass production by the "Dailė" workshops. Many of them were designed by Valdemaras Manomaitis and Jonas Mikėnas. Many figurines of children and athletes were produced based on models designed by Leokadija Belvertaitė-Žygelienė, who worked at the "Dailė" factory. By far the most popular figures, however, were those of dancing girls, dressed in national folk costumes, happily twirling to a folk song, stamping their feet in clogs, or bowing gracefully, straw hat in hand. Žygelienė depicted blonde, braided young girls, poised in thought, or carrying well water in clay pitchers, watering flowers, feeding geese. These sincere and fairly simple ceramic sculptures were very popular and, because they didn't provoke the attention of political minders, they were produced in large quantities from the start of the 1950s to the mid-1960s.