Since its founding, the Khmelnytsky Regional Art Museum has always paid special attention to women’s art. We value not only preserving the legacy of female artists who shaped the history of Ukrainian art, but also actively expanding their presence in the museum space, bringing women’s artistic practices to the forefront of contemporary art discourse.

It is therefore with great pleasure that we invite you to “WorldVIEW”—a large-scale exhibition project by Olena Pryduvalova, where wartime paintings, entering into dialogue with graphic works from the 2000s, form a multi-layered narrative about the subtle interconnections between the artist’s inner world, her memory, daily rituals, and unwavering faith in life amidst historical upheavals.

The artist was born in Kyiv, a city that has always directly influenced and continues to influence her visual vision and sensibility. Her artistic mastery was shaped under the mentorship of distinguished teachers—Oleksandr Titov, Ihor Nesmiianov, Danylo Lider, and Serhii Podervianskyi. During the defense of her thesis (some of the sketches for which are being presented to the public for the first time), Heorhii Yakutovich (who was then chairing the examination committee) recognized in Olena Pryduvalova’s work the freedom of color and immediacy of expression that would later become defining features of her art. It was in the gouache technique that he saw the future of the artist, one that would best resonate with her artistic temperament.

Later, in an environment where women artists often had to set aside their personal ambitions at the easel in favor of the social roles and responsibilities imposed upon them, gouache truly became a constant collaborator in Olena Pryduvalova’s creation of her own space of artistic autonomy.

Thus, the central place in the project is occupied by graphic sheets created by the artist in the early 2000s during her numerous travels through what was then still a peaceful Ukraine. Despite significant differences in rhythm, color, compositional structure, and broad geography—from the Crimean to the Carpathian Mountains—these works form a dense network of visual observations, where each motif appears not only as a reflection of what was seen but also as a means of focusing and comprehending the artistic experience. This is precisely why some landscapes resemble theatrical sets, in which every element is subordinated to the internal dramaturgy of the image, while others retain the fragility of a first impression, conveyed through a laconic and exceptionally precise artistic language.

If the landscapes are a dialogue between the artist, space, and memory, then the self-portraits, which occupy a special place in the exhibition, emerge as a profound monologue of self-discovery and the most intimate part of the exhibition’s narrative.

The exhibition traces the evolution of the self-portrait in Olena Pryduvalova’s work: from the realistic pieces created in the early 2000s, which focus on capturing physical appearance, to the nearly abstract canvases of 2021, in which the subject of artistic exploration is no longer the face but the artist’s inner state. In her self-portraits, Pryduvalova consciously distances herself from the tradition of aesthetic self-presentation. Her gaze turns inward, focusing on the fragile moments of change and instability. This is precisely why the artist resorts to a kind of deconstruction: she chooses unexpected angles, disrupts the usual compositional balance, and eschews detail. Working quickly and intuitively, she concentrates her expression into a few key elements—line, spot, color—transforming the self-portrait into a field of inner reflection.

With the outbreak of the war, Olena Pryduvalova, like many Ukrainian artists, faced a crisis of artistic expression. Her usual creative practices lost their obviousness, and the very possibility of continuing to work seemed problematic. At the same time, the decision to remain in her native Kyiv and share the city’s experience, anxieties, and resistance was unquestionable for the artist. A strong source of support during this time were the people the artist encountered daily in her native Lukianivka, which had been under targeted enemy fire since the war’s first days.

Returning to artistic practices became an act of inner renewal. In the artist’s words, drawing became a means of survival, inner discipline, and a return to life amid the war. The works presented in the exhibition, created after 2022, emerged as a personal ritual of resilience—a repetitive gesture that helped maintain a sense of reality when the familiar order was crumbling.

Olena Pryduvalova’s artistic vision leans toward maximum semantic concentration, which almost always takes the form of a series, each centered around a single overarching motif or state that finds its embodiment in the title. It is this motif that accumulates a whole spectrum of images, emotions, and experiences, becoming the key to understanding the series. Thus, the works from the series “May–August 2022” emerged following the horrific news after the de-occupation of the Kyiv region. Emotionally complex and full of drama, they are, at the same time, an invaluable chronicle of the experience and inner tension the artist felt during those days.

At the same time, work begins on a cycle of series dedicated to her native Lukianivka: “Street Trading,” “Underpass. Lukianivka,” “Buy Flowers.” The main characters in these works are ordinary people, and Lukianivka appears not so much as a place as a state of shared reality—anxious, vulnerable, yet full of vitality. Of particular significance in this context is the series of portraits of female vendors from the Lukianivka Market. The artist is drawn not so much to the characters themselves as to their daily stubbornness to keep on living. At a time when death has become part of everyday experience, it is these women who embody a different kind of strength—the strength of life that continues despite everything.

The visual language of the “Guard” series is built on the contrast between expressive, saturated lines and dense painterly masses that form atypical images. Through the apparent simplification of the human figure, Olena Pryduvalova manages to get to the heart of the matter—the very essence—the raw human nerve. The characters in Pryduvalova’s works may exist separately, but they feel like part of a broader structure, within which the guard appears not as a group of people, but as a state of constant presence, attention, and readiness for collective resistance.

The “WorldVIEW” project emerged as yet another attempt at a museum-based exploration of the internal transformations taking place within Ukrainian artist Olena Pryduvalova amid the prolonged uncertainty of war. For the artist, preparing for this exhibition became a space for attentive observation of her own inner world, in which her usual cheerfulness and sense of wholeness gave way to anxiety, vulnerability, and the need to rediscover points of support.

But the triptych “Where the Mountains Are,” created just a month ago, marks a new stage in the artist’s work. After a long period of subdued color palettes, intense color is returning to her works, perceived not only as a formal shift in her artistic language but as a sign of inner renewal and the return of vitality. And that means another exhibition is just around the corner…