A retrospective exhibit “Life is Art” consists of items presented by the museum and the artist’s family collection. It is dedicated to his centennial anniversary. “Volobuiev is Chardin of our time. The beauty of routine things we do not notice is astonishing,” said famous artist Mykola Hlushchenko about Volobuiev once. A book about realism that was compiled using the master’s documents and notes, was presented at the exhibit opening.
“I picked photos, letters, and other items that have something to do with father’s still life paintings. The exhibit supervisor and I decided to make the installation in the museum to partially recreate his working atmosphere. For example, the jug is placed near the unfinished still life picture,” told The Day artist Natalia VOLOBUIEVA, daughter of Ukrainian classic master of fine arts. “Everyone in our family has some artistic skills: my mother Olena Yablonska, my father Yevhen Volobuiev, my aunt Tetiana Yablonska. My brother, who was named Yevhen after our father, and I are artists, and both of my daughters are artists too. When I was a child I remember falling asleep to my parents’ conversations about art – they had whispered arguments about fine arts and realism, about ‘left’ and ‘right.’
“The decade from the end of the 1950s till the end of the 1960s was relatively calm. But in 1968 there was an exhibit that impressed my father profoundly. His works were treated with hostility, this incident is described in detail in the book. The colleagues wrote a report on my father, so the Artists Association board members could influence him in some way. But they neglected that signal and never took any serious steps to change the situation. In my opinion, the real task of social realism was not portraying what was actually happening, but what should be happening. Though when the details are convincingly realistic, even a completely made up piece of art turns into a masterpiece. We look at this painting and realize that this could never be true, because Soviet milkers cannot wear snow white robes at work and tractor drivers cannot look neat, clean, with their hair perfectly done. But an average person looks at the pictures and believes what he sees, because it is painted in a realistic way. Of course, my father had some combined orders, but my parents never had to draw anything that would glorify Soviet regime.
“Now, when I am getting the exhibit ready, I understand how important realism was for my father. And not the socialist, or any other kind, but the realism he considered to be the language that helped him communicate with the audience. I would also call it ‘realism without adjectives.’ Humanity was the main theme in Volobuiev’s art, but it was humanity without a beautiful disguise, it was awkward and plain. He was also into portraying the empathy, compassion, defending the weak ones. He liked to paint senility and tender youth. He was lucky to possess very exquisite and lyrical vision of life, and at the same time he obtained a very firm stand of a realist painter.”
Your father collected horse collars, jugs, dishes, and embroidery. His paintings were permeated with the idea of rendering the feeling of life via an object. He had the so-called “hungry still lifes,” but there were also others, sophisticatedly esthetic.
“I would rather call them ‘still lifes with a meaning,’ because through them we perceive human life. He followed his own principle in art: ignore all techniques and skills. Every new piece was created from a scratch, because at a certain stage, the old experience became just a burden. Father thought that as an artist he must plunge into the image of each individual work. This is why he experimented, painting on wood, canvas, or cardboard. Each new picture was for him a ‘first time.’ This is why he has no pupils and followers.
“Curiously, when he was painting from nature, father would plan it from the start: he consciously rejected everything unnecessary, and he tells about this in his book. Mother recollected a curious incident, when she accompanied father to sketch in the open. They were both busy painting, and mother keeps glancing at father’s canvas and sees that he is ‘lying,’ his sky is wrong, and his trees are all wrong, whereas she is doing it right. But when they both come home, mother compares the two canvases and realizes that her husband was able to ‘capture it,’ but she failed.
“Father knew what he was doing and why. Paradoxically, he painted effortlessly, but he always worked very hard. Mother had a different style. She would work long and hard to obtain a certain effect, and she would put on layer after layer, so her canvases were heavy from paint. On the contrary, father’s painting was transparent, and all this lightness seemed to be contained inside. He had a lot of tiny albums. He could ponder over a painting from morning till night, and put down his ideas in the album. He would start with a little, matchbox-size sketch, and then he would make a big canvas out of it. He would come to his studio and paint pictures with a sort of 3D effect, as if looking at the object from every side, at various angles. This was his search for a perfect version.
“My father always got at the point. He never tried to step aside and pretend not to notice life. Tseltner, an art critic, dubbed his pictures ‘backyard painting,’ but I think this is totally wrong. All his life Volobuiev was being squeezed in the frame of the lyrical painter, but he was different. Basically, he could have only made still lifes, and he would nevertheless remain a great painter. But he always said, ‘I want to paint true pictures! I want to raise issues!’ He was much more interested in real life than in just picturesque scenery. This is what realism meant for father.
“I remember the scandal when he painted his Working Woman: an old woman with knotty, work-weary hands, whose chest was all covered in medals. Father was reproached that he had painted a caricature, and our Soviet working woman cannot look like that. He would candidly reply, ‘She IS a working woman, can’t you see? She has been working her whole life, she has dedicated her life to it. This is the triumph of labor!’
“Father had a shrewd eye, and at the same time he was extremely sensitive, and he sincerely poured his impressions onto canvas. He left many notes and sketches, which I compiled into one thick volume. For the title I used father’s quote: ‘Realism is a strong, tenacious, giant, and insatiable monster.’ Now the book has been printed, sponsored by Ihor Hilbo. I have gathered a lot of material, actually much more than you need for one edition. In fact, there is enough for two books. I simply read father’s albums and little notepads and typed in the text which father had written on the margins. It took me a year – while for father it lasted a lifetime.”
The artist’s life is reflected in his profound notes about art: “Everything around us can be picturesque if we are able to comprehend it, and discover its poetic aspect. I don’t do what the viewer sees on canvas; I do what he takes with him” (Yevhen Volobuiev).
The Day’s FACT FILE
Yevhen Volobuiev (1912-2002) was a Kyiv-based Ukrainian painter, author of landscapes, still lifes, and conversation pieces. Born in the village of Varvarivka near Kharkiv. In 1928-31 Volobuiev studied at the Kharkiv Art School, in 1931-35 – at the Kharkiv Art Institute (his teachers were Semen Prokhorov and Mykhailo Sharonov), and as a third-year student (until 1940) at the Kyiv Art Institute (the workshop of Fedir Krychevsky and Dmytro Shavykin). From 1947 to 1954 Volobuiev taught at the Kyiv Art School. In 1995, Volobuiev was awarded the title of People’s Artist of Ukraine.
