Vyžuonėliai Manor

While travelling from Utena on the road to Kupiškis, just five kilometres away from Utena, a tree-lined road forks to the right leading to the Vyžuonėlės estate on the bank of the river Vyžuona.

At the beginning of19th century, Vyžuonėliai manor was founded by Count Edvardas Huten-Čapskisas part of Vyžuonos manor, but all of his manors were confiscated due to participating at The January Uprising aimed at the restoration of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

In 1879 General Vladimir Veriovkin acquired the estate and gave it a name of “Blagodatj” (“blessing” in Russian). Here, in this estate, his daughter, a famous German avant-garde painter of Russian origin Mariana Veriovkina (1860-1938), started her path to painting. At the end of the 19th century she lived in Vilnius, St. Petersburg and used to spend summers in her beloved Vyžuonėlės estate, where she started painting. In 1896 she went to Munich to study fine arts and stayed there. At the beginning of the 20th century she joined the German community of fine arts, and jointly with fellow-painters Aleksej Javlenski, Vasilij Kandinski, Paul Klee, August Macke, Franz Marc and others established the avant-garde group of the “Blue Rider”. Veriovkina got famous in the West Europe as one of the first expressionist painters. Her paintings feature bright colours, restless, dramatic and mystic mood. After the First World War and to the end of her days Veriovkina lived in the town of Askona (Switzerland).

The park of the Vyžuonėlės estate, the wooden living house decorated with ornamented carvings, outhouse buildings (for coaches, stabling, stackyard, etc.) have survived to date. Also the studio of Mariana Veriovkina survived – the only studio building of a painter in Lithuania of the 19th century. At the end of the 19th century the Russian painter Ilja Repin - the teacher of the painter – came on a visit to this estate, her friend Aleksej Jevlenski painted together with Mariana Veriovkina here, too.

After the acquisition some of the manor buildings by young artists, projects for the renovation of the manor are currently being prepared.