This project continues displaying the art treasures kept in the museum’s collection. The exposition presents ten landscapes by the well-known American painter Rockwell Kent (1882-1971). The exhibit’s curator Olena Zhyvkova, in charge of the museum’s West European painting section, says that the Khanenko Museum received Kent’s pictures in the 1960s, after the artist had staged a high-profile exhibition in the USSR.
“As Kent was about to travel to the Soviet Union, the US government impounded his passport, and he could not cross the border. The artist only managed to catch up with the exhibition in Kyiv,” explains Oleksandra SAKORSKA, a West European painting section associate. “So he decided to gift 80 pictorial and 800 graphic works to the former USSR museums, emphasizing that some of them were to remain behind in Kyiv.” The Khanenko Museum now keeps Ukraine’s largest collection of the American artist’s works, and there are a few items in Lviv and Odesa.
By the manner of painting, the artist stands aside all the popular early- and mid-20th-century trends.
“Kent was once called ‘American Roerich’ because his works resemble Roerich’s cycles about the Himalayas. The artist painted real, albeit exotic, nature, so the latter looks fantastic. Bright colors and various shades – Kent’s manner is easy to recognize,” comments Anastasia MATSELO, a senior associate at the West European painting section.
Kentcombined the talents of a painter, a graphic artist, a writer, an architect, and a photographer. Still in his youth, the artist sought inspiration in traveling. This thirst for impressions is quite conspicuous at this exhibition too. Ten landscapes display the four “points” of the artist’s artwork: Monhegan Island in the US, Tierra del Fuego, Greenland, and a farmstead in northern New York State.
These landscapes let everybody see the nooks located literally at the back of beyond. For example, Parry Harbor, Tierra del Fuego shows a place in Chile, where Kent stopped on his way to Cape Horn at the very extremity of South America.
While traveling, the artist always tried to follow as much as possible the local lifestyle: he lived together with aborigines in their dwellings, knew how to ride sleighs and hunt for reindeer and seals. Sakorska recalls: “The artist usually carried a huge number of painting accessories, but he sometimes had to use paint sparingly. Here, in the landscape Hilltop Graves, North Greenland, he wanted to add a brown spot and left just a primed canvas.”
“A land of nearly absolute beauty” is what Kent called Greenland. The painter visited this polar island three times and once spent almost a year there. Nights are long, days are short, and it is very cold in that harsh northern land. Kent often worked in a kerosene lamp-lit hut, so he had to finish some works after coming back home. For example, it took him a solid 20 years to finish a picture,” Sakorska says. “The artist’s exotic landscapes are in vogue now. Most of them show ‘warm’ nature, tropics, although Kent liked painting Greenland.” But the daredevil American was not only a landscapist, but also a philosopher who asserted: “I don’t want petty self-expression. I want to paint the rhythm of eternity.”
The exhibit will remain open until October 20.
