She loved to work one-on-one with nature and feelings. The last years of her life were the most difficult. However, even when there was little possibility to draw she still wouldn’t stop…
Tetiana Yablonska is the author of practically the most famous paintings of the Soviet time: Before Start, Bread, Spring, Flax, and Morning. Her works are like haiku-paintings. Just like in Japanese miniatures, canvases feature a spied event from nature, which is valuable in itself as a sign of the continuity of life.
Yablonska was recognized a lifetime classic in independent Ukraine. However, the artist would hide from public “activity” at home at first opportunity. She even received the Taras Shevchenko Prize at home. In schools, where her daughters studied, she refused to join any parents committee and only once in 1972 in class of her daughter Haiane she showed slides from a trip to Florence.
When serious illness confined the artist to bed she did not give up: she could not walk but she painted. She drew everything she could see from her window and never repeated herself. She gave this amazing series of pastel landscapes the name “Windows.” She made text notes to seasonal, daily, mood, and other changes in “Windows.” Those notes were very concise, precise, and sincere. The artist suffered a stroke and never recovered. In her last year she hardly ever spoke. She communicated with Haiane and two of her children in a language only they could understand. Still she continued to draw with her left hand silently until her very last day. Yablonska drew her window again in the last days of her life. She finished her work and quietly passed away.
The exhibit of works in Khlibnia Gallery, according to Uliana Holovchanska, head of the research and exposition department at the Saint Sophia Cathedral, “aims at honoring the memory of the legendary artist and enables many fans of her work to enjoy these beautiful works of art, which over the years become of greater artistic and historical importance for Ukraine.”
The exposition includes works that present every period of Yablonska’s artistic career: from student times to the last years of her life.
Yablonska’s personal exhibitions were held in hundreds of cities all over the world. Her paintings are now kept in Tretyakov Gallery, State Russian Museum, Dragon Museum in Taiwan, Ukraine’s National Museum, Kyiv Museum of Russian Art, Art Museums in Poltava, Zaporizhia, Kharkiv, Lviv Art Gallery, and in private collections.
Exhibit in Khlibnia Gallery will be open until April 10.
