Information about the work
Among the artist’s works are many abstract pieces characterized by rhythm, balanced compositions, and a masterful combination of the color palette. From tens of hundreds of lines, strokes, stripes, color dabs, and spots, canvases emerge from beneath the master’s brush that urge us toward contemplation and meditation. In the displayed canvas Bells of Chornobyl [Dzvony Chornobylia] (canvas, oil, 1988, acquired in 1993 for the Khmelnytskyi Regional Art Museum collection from a private collector), Marchuk balances on the verge of abstraction and figurativeness. Despite the fact that the Soviet authorities at the time suppressed the scale of the disaster, the artist uses the means of painting to recreate the full tragedy of those horrific events: indescribable pain, mortal loss of all living things, fear, and doom. The author conveys the consequences of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster through personal feelings that seem to tear him apart into atoms. In the center of the composition, he paints a stylized head with self-portrait features that appears to split in half. Marchuk demonstrates how the invisible “peaceful atom” turns life into an Armageddon.
Oil on canvas. 70 × 80
