Famous Kyiv-based painter Nina Bondarenko is an amazing master of instant insight and irrepressible impulse. She painted magic flowers in space of landscapes filled with color in one breath with free thick strokes. The artist draws flowers that capture her eye during sketching in the Botanical Garden in Pechersk district, not far from her home on Kurhanivska Street (Peonies, Botanical Garden, Those That Bring Light).
The artist also paints grandiose bouquets she assembled herself in a very emotional and passionate manner. She decorates not only her workshop, but also her home with those bouquets and turns them into amazing garden (Favorite Bells, Festive Interior during Palm Sunday, Lilies of the Valley, Flowers of July).
Bondarenko creates her still lifes with great inspiration on the balcony of the House of Artists in Gurzuf. The heart of the artist inflamed by Crimean perfect beauty has been calling her there every year since 1975 (Spring Joy, Spring Bouquet, Fall Still Life). In Gurzuf she paints again and again her own vision of the sea in mysterious and different illumination of Chekhov Bay. In this location – the only place on Earth (which Bondarenko, thanks to God, her talent, and assistance of her three sons, has traveled the length and the breadth, visiting the Old and the New World) she is an esoteric and pantheist that identifies the nature with God, feels secret signs with sacred meaning clear only to her. Those signs are sent from heaven from the chief god for her as an artist – the Sun (Chekhov Bay before Baptism, Gurzuf Landscape, Purifying Baptism Element, Baptism Element, First Day of Spring).
Oddly, the extraordinary creative freedom of the artist does not violate the standards of painting and composition, within the framework of which Bondarenko always lines up her neo-impressionistic and neo-expressionistic art works: landscapes of Kyiv and the Crimea, Black Sea and the Mediterranean marinas, aesthetically refined and generous with colors still lifes, that are organically inscribed by the author into cozy, frankly feminine interiors, or in landscapes with the triumphant phantasmagoria of color (April Interior, Crescendo, Berber Pottery, Sunbeam).
Bondarenko received major professional training in the 1950s in Kyiv School of Applied Arts (now Mykhailo Boichuk Kyiv State Institute of Decorative and Applied Arts) at the Department of Textile. After graduation in 1961 she was distributed to the Darnytsia Silk Factory, where she worked as a leading artist for 35 years until 1996, which later made it possible for her to fully realize herself in painting. That is why Bondarenko’s paintings have so many fans among art collectors from Ukraine, Russia, and America.
The artist has never imitated anyone in art, although she has her idols among the great artists: Mikhail Vrubel, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, and Vasily Kandinsky.
Bondarenko’s creative credo is a poetic line from Vladimir Nabokov’s works: “You swear that you believe in tall tale…” Bondarenko is the kind of artist who believes in magic power, in fairy tales, and in fiction that has permanently settled in her soul.
Bondarenko’s life began in the heart of old Kyiv – on Podol on Frunze Street, 22 in a tiny wooden house with carved low windows, where she was born in 1941. There she was cherished by her endearing and affectionate like sun, always smiling, gentle, and virtuous mother Maria Muzychenko – a woman who radiated bright light of kindness. Bondarenko’s father – Petro Munenko died at the age of 27 when his daughter just turned three (that is why since 1991 the artist signs her paintings with their last names Munenko-Muzychenko in memory of her beloved parents – her two guardian angels).
Mother Maria sewed pillows on a sewing machine “Singer” for sale in order to feed her four children. She decorated them with ornamental applications and also made felt shoes that were incredibly popular in post-war times. This ineffaceable memory of Bondarenko is reflected in her original painting The Way from Podol, where the portrait of the unforgettable mother at her sewing machine is presented in back lighting.
Here on Podol Bondarenko met her true love, when she met Valerii Deimontovych grandson of the famous Archpriest Andrii Slavynsky (1877-1966), who served faithfully from being a monk to the senior priest of this famous religious community for 58 years from 1904 until 1962.
Valerii Deimontovych has recently passed away. Talented Kyiv specialist in metallophysics, polyglot, and intellectual set off on a round-the-world trip at the age of 72 (2009-10) as a part of the crew of the sailing yacht Kupava. The team bravely covered distance from Kyiv to Montevideo (Uruguay), going across the Atlantic Ocean and happily returned home. After a while Valerii died. In memory of her beloved husband Bondarenko painted her sad canvas I Will Be Waiting, I Will Be Waiting… hoping that he still has not completed his journey.
Long way from Podol of Nina Bondarenko continues in her solo exhibition of paintings at the Museum of Modern Art of Ukraine on Hlybochytska Street, 17. Extraordinary Ukrainian artist invites us into her fantastically attractive artistic world – in her “fiction” that she has been creating with great love for people and life.
