Marija Gimbutas

Marija Gimbutas was born on January 23, 1921, in Vilnius. She was an American professor of archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her original and controversial Kurgan hypothesis pointed to the arrival in Europe of a population speaking Proto-Indo-European, replacing the matristic cultures (centered around the cult of the goddess) inhabiting the territory of Old Europe (now Southwestern Europe) between 6500 and 3500 BC. This theory has been confirmed by aDNA (ancient DNA) research. The term Old Europe was used in the title of the exhibition The Lost World of Old Europe: The Danube Valley, 5000-3500 BC, organized by New York University between 2009 and 2010. In 2021, on the centenary of her death, the exhibition Goddesses and Warriors was organized at the National Museum of Lithuania in Vilnius. I learned of my admission to the Doctoral School of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw on her hundredth birthday, January 23, 2021.

In my doctoral work, I treated the matristic Neolithic cultures as a source of wisdom and knowledge about community living and coexistence with nature. Gimbutas emphasized that the cultures she studied were characterized by civilizational advancement, which, according to her, is evidenced by achievements in the field of art. In my artistic research, I immersed myself in their richness. Through the reconstruction of my energetic female lineage in a series of portraits, I discovered the meanings and qualities of the feminine element, redefining it for myself and for the world. Many representations of the goddess—ritual figurines discovered at archaeological sites led by Gimbutas—became an inspiration for me in painting, writing, and also in performance art.

However, it was the animal archetypes—the animalistic incarnations of the goddess—that most strongly influenced my imagination. They were the guides that introduced me to her world, telling me about the smooth transition from death to life. The Death Beholder is represented by the snake, the vulture, and the owl. The Life Giver is represented by the frog and the fish. Both aspects are connected by the Regeneratrix, represented by water motifs: waves, but also nets, zigzags, and spirals, indicating the cyclical nature of death and life.