Pranas Lapé, for many years a resident of Chamberlain, painter, illustrator, teacher, fisherman, cook, and conversationalist, died in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Jan. 13.
He was born Jan. 11, 1921, in Klaipeda, Lithuania, and from 1941 to 1943 studied at the Kaunas Institute of Applied Arts. In 1944, as a young man of 23, he fled his country with his friend, Felix, towards the west to escape the returning Soviet army. They were captured by the Germans, and sent north as conscripted labor to Finland and Norway, where they worked up near the Arctic Circle. In the winter of 1945, the young men escaped across the Norwegian Alps to Sweden. Pranas remained in Sweden from 1945-1946, continued his studies at the private Anders Beckman School in Stockholm and in 1946, Lapé taught life drawing classes at that same institute until his journey to the United States in 1949. He overstayed his permission to travel, and thus remained in this country, settling in New York City. From 1950 to 1956 he worked as a free lance artist, mostly designing and illustrating books for the largest publishers in New York: Doubleday, Scribner’s, Random House, Grosset & Dunlap, and other firms. In 1957 he was offered a position teaching art at a progressive women’s high school, The Thomas School, in Rowayton, Conn. where he was head of the art department.
In 1971 the New England Commission of Independent Schools evaluated the art program designed by Lapé as one of the outstanding strengths of the Thomas School. In 1972 Lapé signed a five-year contract to design a similar program for the Belmont Hill School in Massachusetts. Several years later, he decided at last to dedicate himself full time to painting, and moved to Chamberlain. As a book illustrator, Lapé designed over 300 book covers for American and Lithuanian publishers. In Sweden, he also worked on set designs for indoor and outdoor theatrical performances. Lapé began to exhibit his work in 1953 in New York and participated in numerous group exhibitions with both Lithuanian and American artists. His paintings have been shown in six solo shows of his artwork: 1965 Long Island, 1969 Chicago, 1980 New Canaan, 1981 Brooklyn, 1985 Boston, and in 2004, a retrospective exhibition at the National Museum of Vilnius. In 2008 he was awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Great Lithuanian Duke Gediminas medal.
After 1989, when Lithuania was at last able to re-emerge as an independent country, Pranas Lapé began to plan his return home, acquiring an apartment near the National Museum of Vilnius where he lived until his death.
Pranas Lapé came to Maine as the result of a car accident in which he was badly injured. A friend in New York, offered Pranas his cottage in Chamberlain to recover, and thereafter he spent many years there in the summers painting, fishing, and learning to cook from some of the remarkable chefs who came to visit. Pranas later purchased a cottage in New Harbor, and then acquired the Chamberlain cottage where he lived for many decades and moved the original structure to its present location and substantially rebuilt it.
Pranas Lapé’s life in Chamberlain was in many ways a private and personal re-creation of his early years in Lithuania: he spent many hours in the woods picking mushrooms, smoking and marinating the fish he caught, growing his own vegetables, and teaching many of us the art and craft of these enterprises.
Pranas is survived by his sister, Zita Duobiene of Vilnius, Lithuania.
Memorial service Sat., Jan. 23, and his ashes will be interred in the spring on Mothers’ Day, at the family burial plot in the village of Veivirzenai near the city of Kalipeda, Lithuania. The community at Chamberlain will plan a memorial on Long Cove in August.
