“As a carrier of the values of the ‘seventies’ generation, Vladyslav Mamsykov works with characteristic themes and subjects – the silence of deserted spaces, an urban industrial landscape. The frozen dynamics look somewhat melancholic and distant. The point is to demonstrate the moment of life, its independence from us. The world and the author exist in a single space and do not interfere with each other’s ability to be themselves.” Liudmyla Bereznitska, art critic.
In interviews over the years, the artist has repeatedly emphasized that life is not so attractive, it has a lot of dirt and one cannot be indifferent to it. “People who work,” the artist reflected, “are different: good or bad, decent or not. But they often do their work in terrible, inhuman conditions.”
“Vladyslav Mamsykov’s paintings are immediately recognizable, attracting attention with a peculiar combination of rationality and poetry, a close look at the world around him and a precise selection of eloquent details, emotional restraint and meditation, and a special state of ”attentive silence”, concentration, that invites the viewer to calm contemplation, unhurried conversation, the theme of which is the world around us and the person in it, demonstrate the artist’s personal path, where the general trends of time, passing through the author’s worldview, are filled with the uniqueness of figurative meanings.” Halyna Skliarenko, art critic.
Emotional observations were the main thing that interested Vladyslav Mamsykov, a classic of contemporary Ukrainian art, who was one of the most consistent artists of the “strict style” in the 1960s. And this is despite the fact that he was only a student at the time. In his works, the young artist used the aesthetics of that era to show an ordinary worker as opposed to glorifying the leaders and leaders of the Communist Party of the time. Since the 1970s, Vladyslav Mamsykov has been a consistent romantic and metaphysician.
The canvas “Gasoline” (oil on canvas. 1969) presented in the exhibition is a vivid confirmation of the author’s commitment to the “strict style”. On the other hand, as in the metaphysical paintings, there is a certain mystery, uncertainty, and a wide scope for interpretation. Who is this man? A gas station attendant? A passerby? Or a driver who came to fill up his car? What is he looking at in the pitch black?
The painting impresses with its understatement, atmosphere, and skillful laconic compositional solution. However, if we get acquainted with the artist’s biography and memories of those distant times in more detail, we can try to understand the artist’s intention. Moreover, when asked if his paintings reflected the life of that time, the artist replied that they did.
The artist said that when the family had money in the late 1960s, he bought a car. His father, who had privileges because he was a disabled veteran of the Second World War and a captain in the medical service, helped him buy it during the period of total shortage. Vladyslav used to run errands, and to buy a can of gasoline for the car in those days, he had to stand in line almost all night. A long wait is a waste of time, but it’s also an opportunity to take a break from the whirlwind of business. Here is the solution to the seemingly incomprehensible plot of the painting “Gasoline”.
Despite the mundanity and prosaic nature of the plot, the canvas magnetically attracts contemplation, encourages reflection and a certain meditation. It would seem that the painting depicts an ordinary gas station of the characteristic design of “streamlined forms” of the 1960s, night darkness and a half-disappearing male silhouette. The explanation is obvious – the author’s unsurpassed skill.
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The sources of inspiration for the Soviet Strictly Modern masters of the so-called Khrushchov Thaw of the late 1950s and early 1960s were the avant-garde art of the 1920s, the debunking of the personality cult of dictator Joseph Stalin, and the everyday life of ordinary people, which the artists conveyed in a sublime poetic spirit. The artists abandoned the impersonal heroization of the character and reveal the topic through private experiences. The images are generalized and laconic, the basis of expressiveness are large planes of color and linear contours of figures, the palette is mostly dark, cold, achromatic and ocher-brown.
“A new generation of artists tried to comprehend reality in a new way. Socialist Realism was officially declared ‘not a style, but a method’, which opened up space for searches in the field of artistic skill, formal innovations, and legitimized the return to the interrupted traditions of modernism and avant-garde, both domestic and foreign.“ (From the explication to the exhibition ”Strict and Stylish. Art of the Long Sixties” (2020), Odesa Art Museum, curated by Oleksandr Roitburd).
VLADYSLAV OLEKSANDROVYCH MAMSYKOV (26.05.1940, Omsk, Russia – 02.04.2020, Kyiv).
Father of the artist Maksym Mamsykov (born in 1968, Kyiv).
1964 – graduated from the Kyiv Art Institute (teachers: Volodymyr Kostetskyi, Karpo Trokhymenko, Ilya Shtilman).
Since 1963 – an active participant of all-Ukrainian and foreign art exhibitions.
Since 1971 – member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine.
Personal exhibitions: Kyiv (1991, 2000-02, 2013, 2015), Portland (Oregon, USA, 1995, 1998).
His works are kept in museums and private collections in Ukraine and abroad.
There are two paintings by the artist in the collection of the KhRAM.