We journey north this week from Georgia in the Caucasus Mountains on the southern rim of the former USSR to Lithuania on the Baltic Sea to encounter another artist whose work challenged the atheistic Communist regime of the old Soviet Empire. Antanas Kmieliauskas is known as the Lithuanian Michelangelo for his skill in a wide variety of mediums. During a long and prolific career, he created more walls of frescoes than the Florentine Renaissance Master, as well as sculptures, paintings, and prints suffused with sacred story and the drama of his homeland’s troubled history. As a teenager Kmieliauskas provided illustrations for the publications of anti-Soviet partisan groups. He later ran afoul of the Communist regime by creating sculptures on sacred subjects banned by the authorities. Kmieliauskas is represented in the Collection by a diverse sampling of small format book plates on religious themes now on view on his profile page in the Sacred Artists section. They were a favored medium of graphic artists throughout the Soviet Empire, since they could be easily circulated, often as greeting cards, and evade state censorship. His growing international reputation as an innovative creator of ex-libris ultimately led to a lifting of state sanctions against him. After Lithuania declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1990, Kmieliauskas became a prophet-artist honored in his own country. (John Kohan)