Genius loci – genius mundi. Wilno Tymoteusza Karpowicza

Abstract

In the paper that discusses the childhood and youth of Tymoteusz Karpowicz. I have followed the suggestion of Frank Kujawinski, who assumed that the knowledge of the Vilnius region and local history is indispensable to understand the personality of an artist who was born there and formed by the area. I am also reflecting upon whether the mature works of Karpowicz, an avant-garde artist who valued the idea of changeability (and “leap into the future”) were not a form of the writer’s response to his experiences from adolescence. In the turbulent historic reality, in a multi-cultural city inhabited by Lithuanians, Poles, Belarussians, Jews, Tatars, and Karaites, the artist, sensitive to local and universal content, learnt how to be a global citizen.