Lietuvos dailės muziejaus Nacionalinės dailės galerijos XX a. II p. molbertinės tapybos paveikslų restauravimas

A programme of Postwar painting collection’s conservation, restoration and preventive conservation has been accomplished before the opening the LAM’s National Art Gallery. There are more that 4 000 paintings in the collection. During the firs stage of the project the condition of the works had to be evaluated and the variety and development of painting materials of that time had to be overviewed. There was an aim to find out what influences can be made for the state of a painting by contemporary painting techniques and materials, what means of protection and conservation are essential in order to slow down the process of materials’ decay and to save a painting. Works of art selected during this stage of the project were in the biggest need of conservation and restoration. The publication reminds what tools are used what the structure of a classic easel painting is. It also discusses typical “deviations” that are typical for Soviet era artists. Generalizing the condition of the paintings of the second half of the 20th c. it is clear that almost one third of paintings were created with unconventional means that are not intended to easel painting and sometimes are lower in quality and sensitive to the influence of environment. Therefore, the condition of these paintings already is poor and their restoration requires some non-traditional methods of conservation. At the end of 2005 in the premises of postwar collections a specialized workshop for easel painting restoration was founded. In this workshop a group of restorers started restoration and conservation of exhibits for the LAM’s National Art Gallery. First of all, the stabilization of the large format pictures painted on hardboards has been started. Most of them had some deformations. 152 large size and 48 smaller pictures have been selected all in all. Another group of restorers simultaneously were conserving canvases. Around 200 large and medium canvases have been chosen. Furthermore, in addition to checkup of postwar collection and conservation and restoration of paintings selected for the exposition of the LAM’s National Art Gallery, a great preparatory work for transferring other paintings of 20th c. to their new repository was accomplished. More than 2 000 works of large and medium size have been cleaned, disinfected and packed. Restorers and technologists of restoration already have made a tremendous job by scientifically preparing works of 20th century’s painters for storing and exposing, however, they have an interesting large scale project to complete in the future: there is an urgent need to identify materials used by contemporary painters in order to find out everything about the processes of their aging and be able to apply the appropriate individual methodologies for their storing and conservation