Information about the work
The canvas In Memory of Amedeo Modigliani [Pamyati Amadeo Modigliani] (oil on canvas, 1984; acquired by the Sumy Regional Art Museum in 1988) belongs to the early stage of his artistic development, as evidenced by the painterly technique and the chosen theme. The composition presents a three-quarter, close-up portrait of a man wearing a white shirt and a black jacket. In the immediate foreground sits a chair holding a shot glass with clothing draped over it. The man’s distorted face is framed in a way that crops the upper portion of his head. Against a red-brown backdrop behind the main subject stand two large stretchers featuring portraits: a woman on the left and a man on the right. Serving as a background, they act as clues to the identity of the artwork’s protagonist. All portrait depictions are stylized and rendered flatly. The central figure features conventionally distorted, elongated facial traits, while the surrounding fragmentary, mask-like portraits echo memories of Modigliani’s oeuvre.
Dark blackish-red and brown tones dominate, punctuated by contrasting dark accents. Red constructs the emotional field of the painting, evoking tension, passion, and internal drama, functioning less descriptively and more psychologically. The painterly surface is dense and impastoed, with a distinct tactile quality to the brushstrokes that lends materiality to the image and heightens its expressive charge. The brushwork is often coarse, rhythmic, and attuned to the overall emotional tenor. Space is compressed and fragmented; the placement of additional faces around the central character creates a closed, psychologically charged environment. The absence of deep perspective is further emphasized by flatness and decorative qualities. The work stands as a vivid example of expressive modernist painting with pronounced elements of Expressionism and Primitivism, employing the distortion of form and proportions, flatness, simplification, and stylized generalization.
The painting can be interpreted as a meditation on the artist’s inner world. The multiplicity of faces hints at a split personality or the interplay of shifting psychological states. Rejecting realism in favor of profound psychological expression, Panych crafts an image of man as a complex and contradictory representative of the artistic realm. This is a work devoid of playfulness; instead, it is an attempt to hold onto something fleeting. Painting here becomes almost a gesture of memory—unstable, blurred, and one that erases rather than records.