P. Rimšos "Vargo Mokykla"

3D Model

“Lithuanian School 1864-1904”, by sculptor Petras Rimša, Kaunas. A mother, by her spinning wheel, is secretly teaching her child to read a banned book in Lithuanian.

By the break of the 19th and 20th centuries, in Lithuania, a clandestine school operated almost in every village, because of the Lithuanian press ban (1865 to 1904) in the Russian Empire.

The idea for this was originally created in 1906 (as a painting), the model was the sculptor’s mother Magdalena Rimšienė. Soon it became the national symbol for the Lithuanian schooling in the period 1864-1904. In 1939 the sculptor made the present copy.