The Zaporizhia Regional Art Museum launched the exhibit of the artistic dynasty of Viktor Ryzhykh, his wife Halyna Neledva, and their daughter Olena. The exhibit is timed to the 80th birth anniversary of Viktor Ryzhykh and the 75th birth anniversary of his wife. This time the admirers of masters’ creative work were presented over 20 paintings from the museum funds and several paintings by Olena Ryzhykh.
“None of the Ukrainian museums has such a rich collection of works by Viktor Ryzhykh and Halyna Neledva, we have 27 of them! They mainly refer to the period of the 1970s-1980s when the Zaporizhia museum keepers had a possibility to receive the paintings or buy them at public expense. However, over the past years the funds have been actively replenished due to generous donators including Viktor Ryzhykh and Halyna Neledva,” senior scientist of the Zaporizhia Regional Art Museum, organizer of the exhibit Tamara HONCHARENKO remarked. “Olena Ryzhykh got inspired by her parents’ example and donated several of her works to our museum. We are also glad to present them to our visitors.”
The names of Halyna Neledva and Viktor Ryzhykh necessarily go together since the beginning of the 1950s not only because they make a couple. Their creative work and lifestyle have something that attracts the people close to art. Ryzhykh and Neledva make a certain example of the honest attitude to creation. Starting with the 1960s their workshop was one of the centers of the intellectual life in Kyiv, the laboratory of the much-desired freedom where like-minded people often gathered. That is why Ryzhykh and Neledva used to paint portraits so often. The artists often created quite harsh, ironic and sometimes grotesque self-portraits. However, their guests were not only painters: they played guitar, poets and artists argued... Their guests came from Georgian and Baltic countries, Moscow and Armenia.
It is the first time over the past 20 years that Viktor Ryzhykh and Halyna Neledva’s paintings of the 1970s-1990s are exhibited in one space.
Viktor Ryzhykh has more architectural and historical motifs. He has travelled a lot in Europe, mainly in Italy, so he managed to convey this genuine feeling of eternal antiquity in his canvases. His paintings are pronouncedly realistic as he avoided the temptations of modern trends in painting and wants to stick to the classical style. Instead, his daughter Olena is certainly an artist of characters as in her every painting she emphasizes the essential: dominating shape, color, structure or coloristic atmosphere.
“Viktor Ryzhykh is more attached to composition structures of the Renaissance art… As for Halyna Neledva, we can literally speak about acoustic coloration of her works. She considers the music of light as the supreme tension of the material nature,” art critic Olha PETROVA remarked. “It is real expressionism with a ramp of colorful excitement. Not a plot is essential but a creative impulse. Besides, everything Halyna Neledva paints is directed so that the viewers feel as if they were participants of the actions or co-authors of the painting.”
The exhibit “Fragments of eternity” is a creative work retrospective of each of the painters and a perfect opportunity to see three absolutely unique and different painters in one space. Every member of this creative family is a bright, unique and powerful artist. Regardless of the big difference of their styles which makes them difficult to compare, all the three artists are united by a very high level of artistic culture and each of them has significantly influenced the history of the Ukrainian art.
The exhibit “Fragments of eternity” is open for visitors of the Zaporizhia Regional Art Museum every day, except Sunday and Monday, till November 6.
