Though long known in Europe, this is the first time that Mykola Kumanovsky’s works were brought to Chernivtsi. The cycle of paintings presented in one of the museum’s halls is called “The Conventional Ukrainians.” The exhibit started in Lutsk, the author’s home town, and was also held in other places, including Kyiv. Art critics opine that “The Conventional Ukrainians” is the quintessence of the artist’s creative work and that the series of paintings is united by a common theme — in each name is a certain key to its understanding.
Kumanovsky was born in 1959 in the town of Sataniv, Khmelnytsky oblast. The future artist graduated from the Ivan Trush Lviv School of Arts and Crafts, and later continued his education in the Lviv National Institute of Arts and Crafts.
During all his creative development the painter demonstrated a striking drive for work. He is the author of many famous pictorial and graphic series, such as “The Dark Ukrainian Night,” “The Charmed,” “The Broken Stem is Rustling,” “The Substance,” and “Grandmarch Auto-da-fe.” Kumanovsky is also the author of numerous book illustrations, including Hryhorii Skovoroda’s complete works, which were recently published in the US.
Many art critics think that Kumanovsky is one of the most interesting modern Ukrainian artists. He has won fame in so-called informal art. Back in the 1970s his paintings showed audiences the world with new eyes, in a much different light than the exhibits of the time that met the prescribed socialist realism rules.
People who know his life and work say that scandals even erupted when Kumanovsky’s canvases were withdrawn from exhibits before their opening. The secret services continued to observe the artist closely almost until Ukraine’s independence.
Complicated symbols are the basis of every painter’s work. We should recall the words of the exhibit tutor and art critic Roman Struk, who has been attentively studying the artist’s creative work for many years: “Through unimportant, even minor at first glance details, he tries to tell more about the main characters and gives the key to the sense of his paintings.
The author underscores the axis of perception of the densely concentrated space of the ‘conventional’ world where ‘conventional’ characters, often copied from absolutely real people, live. All the events in ‘The Conventional Ukrainians’ happen under one and the same great sky, pierced by a lonely white cloud that unites the canvases in one thematic series. All this creates the illusion of environmental unreality that exists beyond our dimension and time.”
According to Struk, Kumanovsky’s work arouses interest as that of one of the brightest representatives of the Volynian artistic environment, and “The Conventional Ukrainians” cycle is the best result of Kumanovsky’s latest creative searches. This cycle thematically unites the series of paintings in which the author depicts the fantastic but surprisingly real image of the modern Ukrainians, hungry and sated at the same time, careless yet capable of decisive actions.
Besides the cycle of paintings “The Conventional Ukrainians,” which gave its name to the whole exhibit, the museum also presented the artist’s graphic works, created using various techniques and representing different periods of Kumanovsky’s life, as well as etched bookplates.
