Žmuidzinavičius Museum

Listen for a moment before you go inside. The street here climbs gently uphill, away from the long, tree-lined pedestrian avenue of central Kaunas. Traffic hums somewhere below. And then, through a doorway, you step into a quiet house where hundreds of small faces are watching you. They have horns. Many of them are grinning. Welcome to the place that most people in this city simply call the Devils' Museum.

The official name honours one man: Antanas Žmuidzinavičius, a Lithuanian painter born in 1876 who lived until 1966. For much of the twentieth century, he was one of the best-known artists in the country. He painted the Lithuanian countryside again and again — lakes, fields, low wooden farmhouses, and wide pale skies. His landscapes are calm and patient. That calm makes his other passion all the more surprising.

Žmuidzinavičius collected devils. He did not collect demons from horror stories, but small carved and moulded figures of the devil as Lithuanian folk culture imagines him. His collection began modestly, with just a few pieces. Over the years, friends and admirers kept bringing him more. By the end of his life, his home held a few hundred of these creatures. The museum opened in this building after his death, and the collection has kept growing ever since.

Today the collection numbers in the thousands. Here is the first thing many visitors miss: much of that growth came from ordinary people. Travellers, artists, and families have donated devils from Lithuania and from all over the world. The museum is a branch of the national art museum named after the composer and painter Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis. In a sense, though, the collection belongs to everyone who has ever added a figure to it.

To understand why a respected landscape painter loved devils, it helps to know the Lithuanian devil himself. In local folklore, he is not usually a terrifying lord of evil. He is more often a trickster — clever, greedy, sometimes rather foolish. In many folk tales, a peasant or a soldier outwits him and walks away with his gold. He lives in swamps, mills, and old forests. He is mischievous rather than monstrous.

Some scholars believe this figure has older roots. Before Lithuania adopted Christianity, which happened late by European standards, people honoured their own gods. One theory holds that a pre-Christian deity linked with the underworld and with the dead slowly became the folk devil. That idea is debated, so treat it as one possible thread, not settled history. Either way, the devil in these rooms feels more like a neighbour than an enemy.

As you move through the house, look closely at the materials. Wood is everywhere — limewood, oak, and birch, carved by folk artists and trained sculptors alike. You will also find ceramic devils, metal devils, glass devils, and devils made of cloth and leather. Some are no bigger than a thumb. Others are large enough to stand beside you. The variety of hands and techniques is part of the pleasure.

Notice how expressions change from shelf to shelf. Some devils play musical instruments. Some drink, gamble, or dance. Others carry off sinners, or sulk after losing a bargain. Folk carvers often gave them very human faults — vanity, laziness, a love of beer. Looking at them, you may realise that these figures are really a mirror. They show the habits that village people laughed at in themselves.

The international pieces tell a different story. Devils, demons, and spirit figures from other countries sit near the Lithuanian ones. Masks and carvings from different traditions show how many cultures give a face to mischief and fear. Comparing them is useful. The Lithuanian devil, with his pointed beard and goat-like features, looks quite gentle beside some of his foreign relatives.

Here is the second surprise. Not every devil in this museum is a joke. One well-known sculpture shows Hitler and Stalin as devils, dancing over Lithuania among human bones. It is a hard image to look at. In the twentieth century, this country suffered occupation by both regimes, with deportations, war, and great loss of life. In that sculpture, the old folk trickster becomes a way to talk about real evil.

It is also worth remembering the painter whose house this was. Žmuidzinavičius was active in the early movement for Lithuanian national culture. He was among the founders of the Lithuanian Art Society in 1907, at a time when the country was still part of the Russian Empire. Collecting folk devils fitted that same mission. He was preserving the humour and imagination of ordinary Lithuanian people, alongside painting their land.

Before you leave, give some attention to his paintings, too. After so many grinning faces, his quiet lakes and fields can feel like fresh air. You may begin to see the link between the two collections. Both are about the Lithuanian countryside — one shows its surface, its light and its water. The other shows the stories people told each other there on long winter evenings.

When you step back outside, the street will sound much as it did before — cars, footsteps, perhaps a church bell somewhere across the city. But you may look at Kaunas a little differently now. Somewhere in the old wooden houses of this region, carvers are still shaping small horned figures. And somewhere behind you, on a crowded shelf, a little devil is still grinning, waiting for the next visitor to walk in.