The Kyiv Museum of the Hetmanship launched a new project that combines two distinct genres of fine arts, painting and weaving. Displayed are the works of two artists — Lesia Dovzhenko and Halyna Dihas.
Both are skilled in their art and epitomize two different worlds and two dialogs with their audience. One thing that they have in common is talent. Both are brilliant representatives of the Lviv Art School and draw inspiration from traditional symbolic images but, at the same time, they convey the spatial plasticity of reality in their own way.
Dihas’ delicate still lifes attract the viewers with the scent of ripe apples, the warmth of the shiny bronze samovar, the alarm clock ticking off (Old Things), the cozy air of a tiny cottage with grandma’s old spinning wheel (The Spinning Wheel), and profound spirituality (tapestry Intercession).
Dovzhenko’s works arouse quite different feelings. The artist makes the viewer plunge into the depth of the Trypillia culture with its elements, birds, animals, and plants. They have the air of ancient Slavs’ heathen antiquity and poetic perception of the world, their mythology and ideas of the world in which a human is inseparable from nature (tapestry Birds and monumental painting Linking Times).
Dovzhenko is both an artist and a philosopher. The world around her and man with his simple and complicated feelings are the objects of her contemplation. She is in love with Love itself and renders this feeling in a series of women’s portraits and pretty images of children (In the Bushes, Children’s Holiday).
All in all, the exhibit is impregnated with a harmony of visual and tactile senses. Both artists are great at composition and have a refined taste. Execution that is thorough to the point of virtuosity turns their work into jewels.
