Hall №4
CITY: SPACE OF FREEDOM AND LOVE
20 May 2021 - 25 June 2021

On May 20, Thursday, at 17:00, we invite you to the opening of a personal exhibition by Dmytro Nagurnyi (1946-2019) “CITY: SPACE OF FREEDOM AND LOVE” – a large-scale retrospective exhibition of the legendary artist. The artist’s widow Olha Nahurna (Kyiv) and art critic Natalia Kryvutsa (Kyiv) will participate in the vernissage.

Dmytro Nahurnyi: “I grew up as an urban person. I watched the construction of the bridge to Rybalsky Island. As a teenager, I fell in love with the city with its rhythm and structure, the Kyiv slopes, the Lavra, the view of Podil from Andriyivskyy Descent. I felt the harmony of Ukrainian Baroque.”

Olha Petrova, art historian, curator, artist, Doctor of Philosophy, Honored Artist of Ukraine: “Dmytro Nahurnyi’s urban metaphysics is of a different nature than Giorgio de Chirico’s dreams. Nahurny’s fantasies are a spiritual resonance between the subconscious and the avant-garde of the early twentieth century. His fundamental eclecticism and polystylism was born from the “marriage” of futuristic programs of the 1910s with artistic metaphor of the 1970s and early 1980s. Allegory was then a screen for eloquent truth. In Dmytro’s narrative and literary compositions, metaphor is condensed to the level of a multi-vector informative event. In this dialog between the open and the taboo, Dmytro Nahurnyi’s generation revealed itself to the world.”

Dmytro Horbachov, art critic, international art expert, member of PEN Ukraine, professor: “A polystylist artist whose consciousness is simultaneously influenced by two strongly developed streams: rational and design plasticism (the so-called American psychological complex) and spirituality (of Kyiv-Pechersk pedigree, as Dmytro grew up on the Pechersk hills, which are still imbued with the mystical poetry of the iconographer Alipiy). The combination of such seemingly polar qualities in one person swings the pendulum of imagination, deprives the psyche of peace, and gives rise to many plastic combinations and modifications. We can say that his creative range lies between the earthly and the heavenly. His hyperrealism is filled with a premonition of take-off, prone to fantasy and surrealistic transformations, and often resonates with lyrical notes. At the same time, in Nahurny’s abstracted works, spirituality seems to be embodied, has an internal architectonics, pictorial texture and density. What is a constant in the Dmitrievs’ paintings is a harmonious proportional system, corresponding to the coordinate system on which the balance of the universe rests.”

REFERENCES:

Dmytro Nahurnyi (August 22, 1946, Moscow – June 16, 2019, Kyiv) was a Ukrainian painter, graphic artist, monumentalist, member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine (since 1984), Honored Artist of Ukraine (since 2002). 1964-1968 – Lviv Polygraphic Institute named after Ivan Fedorov (now the Ukrainian Academy of Printing, Faculty of Book Graphics). 1969-1975 – Kyiv State Art Institute (now – National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture, Faculty of Easel Painting, later – Faculty of Monumental Painting, studio of Tetiana Yablonska). Since 1975, he worked at the Kyiv Combine of Monumental and Decorative Art and took an active part in exhibition activities. In May-June 1986, he made a business trip to Chernobyl, where he created 32 portraits of the liquidators of the disaster. 1987-2004 – most of the time he lived and worked abroad (Macedonia, Germany). His works are kept in museums and private collections in Ukraine, Russia, Macedonia, Italy, Finland, Belgium, and Germany.

Read more about Dmytro Nahurnyi in the article by Kateryna Lebedieva, writer, journalist, researcher, art critic, founder of the online portal Library of Ukrainian Art “Dmytro Nahurnyi. The Beauty of Ukrainian Art. Special project of the Library of Ukrainian Art” http://uartlib.org/…/dmytro-nagurnyj-dyuma…/