Since the beginning of the great war, Bakhmut has been in the news in domestic and foreign media. The enemy mercilessly turned it into a total ruin. Even the buildings that survived the Second World War did not survive. But no one will be able to destroy the memory of Bakhmut, because it is captured in paintings and graphic works by artists who were born, lived, and worked here. One of them is Serhii Hryhorovych Sadchykov. The exhibition presents paintings dating from 1987 to 2021. The author lovingly captured the unhurried life of Bakhmut. He recreated ordinary everyday scenes on his canvases, admired flowers and gardens, sang the city, lyrical landscapes of the suburbs and surrounding villages. Sadchykov’s paintings convey the heartbreaking atmosphere of something very dear, bright, trembling, dear to the heart, exciting… Actually, what is called silent happiness. When people just know that they are safe, that they are not in danger of losing their relatives, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, that their home will not be destroyed by enemy shelling. In 2014, the war came to Bakhmut, but then the Armed Forces stopped the aggressor. How could people imagine what incredibly terrible trials they would face in eight years? In his diary, the artist recorded the tumultuous events of the time: the rallies of the so-called “Russian Spring,” the protests of pro-Ukrainian citizens, the capture of the city by Russian militants, wounded soldiers in the hospital, and the liberation of the city. Unfortunately, that album was lost. The artist could not remain indifferent to the fate of his hometown in 2022, so in the spring he went to the military enlistment office, but they convinced him that he was of a respectable age for a soldier. When Serhii Hryhorovych was forced to leave his home due to the approaching hostilities, he could only take a suitcase with the most necessary things. He also had a sketchbook, pencils and felt-tip pens. The works he had been working on all his life remained in Bakhmut, and he simply could not take them out. With no knowledge of a foreign language, a push-button phone, and 85 euros in his pocket, the war threw the artist first to Lviv, then to Poland, and finally to Germany. Today, Serhii Hryhorovych paints portraits to order and earns extra money by teaching art classes. And, of course, he keeps a close eye on what is happening to his hometown. He finds photos of Bakhmut’s defenders on the Internet and paints their portraits. The artist is sure that people should know their heroes, their names should be inscribed in the history of Ukraine and its heroic city. The exhibition “Silent Happiness”, in particular, presents paintings of the late 1980s and early 2000s, which reflect the artist’s search for his own style. The artist experimented with different trends: from impressionism, futurism to photorealism. Over time, the artist’s pictorial language became a kind of author’s reinterpretation of post-impressionism, when the supporters of this trend freely and generalized reproduced the world around them. Sadchykov creates images with the help of layering expressive strokes of the most saturated color gamut, the outlines of objects have mostly clear contours. In general, the artist’s compositions are stylized and, despite the dynamics of the strokes, rather static. Fortunately, in the spring of 2022, volunteers rescued the paintings that were left in the burning Bakhmut. You can now see a part of the artist’s extensive oeuvre at the exhibition “Silent Happiness”.