The display features porcelain and ceramic sculptures, plates, and tiles by Olha Rapai, acknowledged Ukrainian sculptor-ceramist. It brings together two artistic directions of her artwork and goes by a romantic name as “Graces and Buffoons.”
Rapai was born in Kharkiv in 1929. In 1956 she graduated from Kyiv Art Institute, Sculpture department. Her student work – a graceful Uzbek woman (also present at the exhibition) – has been praised by the experts and accepted for mass production. It should be noted that in the 1950s-1960s, USSR had 30 percent of its artistic porcelain produced at Ukrainian factories: among them are factories in Horodnytsia, Korosten, Baranivka, Polonne, the Kyiv Experimental Factory of Artistic Ceramic, etc.
Rapai worked as a sculptor at the Kyiv Experimental Factory of Artistic Ceramic. Her porcelain figurines were mass produced by Polonne, Horodnytsia, and Korosten factories. And now her elegant pieces of art became a valued antique – as a part of the history of Ukrainian small-scale sculpture of the late 20th century.
On the exhibition, there are images of the famous opera singers Larysa and Bella Rudenko, the circus artist Oleh Popov in his stage costume, the brilliant Charlie Chaplin – all made from fine ceramics. Throughout her artwork, a theme of femininity dominates – there are sculptures of ladies in Ukrainian ethnic clothing, beach women clad in “something frivolous,” sportswomen. All of them are graceful and feminine.
“The majority of Rapai’s images were drawn from the real life. Refined, elegant and a bit ironic, these figurines express the worldview of the master. Apart from well-known artists, she also created sculptures of her daughter, herself, and of Oksana Zhnykrup, her friend and co-worker,” says the curator of the exhibition, Olena Korus, art historian, expert of St. Sofia of Kyiv National Heritage site.
After 1967, when she left her job at Kyiv factory, her sculptures had been exhibited on personal and anniversary exhibitions in Kyiv, which provided opportunities to contact with the Rapai’s fragile art.
After eleven years dedicated to porcelain, the artist had opened a new page in her artistic career, choosing authorized exclusive (not mass-produced) ceramics as her tool to express her ideas, which she had been following until her death in 2012. The ceramic comedians and buffoons that are on display, are funny and sad at the same time. Here you see an artist mounting an outlandish beast, and there – two poets, turned down by the muses...
The exhibition also features several artistic plates and two buffoon tiles by the name Circus. The artwork on display comes from private collections and museum funds.
“Graces and Buffoons” by Olha Rapai makes it possible to get acquainted with the art of a talented Ukrainian master – in the first time in many years. Many of the artwork had never been exhibited on public before.
The exhibition will be opened through May 20.
