This small-scale exhibition of graphic art is a continuation of the museum’s long-running project “The Graphic Arts Cabinet” and serves as a sort of overture to the major painting project “AT THE TURNING POINT: Ukrainian Painting of the 1980s and 1990s from the Collections of the Sumy and Khmelnytskyi Museums,” which will open on August 14 of this year in our galleries. The exhibition features color prints from the Khmelnytskyi Regional Museum of Art’s collection—created in 1991, a landmark year—by leading artists from Vinnytsia, Donetsk, Kyiv, Lviv, Poltava, Khmelnytskyi, and Uzhhorod.
For most people, the word “graphics” evokes predominantly black-and-white associations. Indeed, this is true, since graphics is a form of visual art in which the primary means of artistic expression are line, stroke, shape, and dot, while color plays a secondary role. However, there are artists who give color a leading role and boldly “color their graphics” (to paraphrase “watercolorizing etchings” as coined by Oksana Stratiychuk, one of Ukraine’s most outstanding etching artists). Color appears in printmaking through various technical techniques, including printing using multiple plates—each responsible for a specific color—applying paint by hand to a black-and-white print, combining both methods, or creating an original color drawing executed entirely by hand by the artist as a one-of-a-kind piece.
“Explorations and experiments with form, space, and movement; the synthesis of various styles and movements; a return to national tradition; a reevaluation of the realist foundations of art; and complete creative freedom,” —this is how researchers Iryna Borovets and Kateryna Pidhaina, curators of the “Imprint” project, which took place at our partner institution, the Mystetskyi Arsenal, characterize the graphic art of this period.
In our exhibition, you can view both printed and hand-drawn works of art created in 1991. The printmaking techniques (engraving) include etching and linocut, while the original works (art created at the easel) include monotype, watercolor, gouache, and pastel.
The exhibition of color etchings features exceptionally exquisite works by brilliant artists: Nadiya Ponomarenko, Iryna Levitska, Andriy Chebykin, and his students at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture —Oksana Stratiychuk and Oleksiy Sobolevsky. The search for new forms and meanings, and the desire for moral purification from the deceitful insincerity of the Soviet period, were particularly relevant at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, leading to a reinterpretation of historical events, classical ancient mythology, and Christian imagery.
Artists offer fresh interpretations of classic ancient Greek tales about the dreamer-engineer Icarus and the abduction of the beautiful princess Europa by Zeus in the form of a bull. The eroticism inherent in ancient Greek culture is no longer concealed behind the plots, as in the academic works of the Soviet period; it is an integral, sensual component of the works’ visual language. Artists who were young at the time boldly brought the figures of Cossack hetmans and the generalized images of the Cossack Mamai and the Mother of God back into the viewer’s focus, bringing them closer to the viewer through a personal interpretation. Oleksii Fischenko’s urban linocuts, dedicated to Kyiv, straddle the line between modernist abstraction and, at the same time, authentically convey the dynamic rhythms of the metropolis.
The themes of spiritual and national revival are explored in works of easel printmaking by Mykola Mazur of Khmelnytskyi; Lyubov Lebid-Korovay and Iryna Levitska of Lviv; Ihor Yashchenko of Vinnytsia; and Pylyp Taralevych of Donetsk. The artists explore historical and biblical images and themes, imbuing them with a contemporary, multi-layered resonance. Their artistic language is becoming increasingly bold, a development greatly facilitated by their experimentation with technical and artistic techniques.
The challenges of the era were among the key factors that spurred the search for a new language in Ukrainian art in general and graphic art in particular. Creative processes in graphic art were no longer subject to the pressure of imperial Soviet ideology and were infused with the fresh air of freedom in a country that had only just regained its independence.
