Six renowned Ukrainian artists – Oleksandr Diachenko from Kyiv, Petro Antyp from Horlivka, Volodymyr Kochmar and Valerii Pyrohov from Kharkiv, and Vasyl Yarych and Oleh Kapustiak from Lviv – are presenting their works at the Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky National Museum.
This group of sculptors is rightly called the distinguished national team of Ukraine. The National Museum offers something for fastidious gourmets of academic sculpture as well as for fans of contemporary art. Diversity of artists’ plastic language and regional features of schools that trained them are in evidence, as is individual style of each sculptor.
For instance, works by Horlivka-born Antyp are inspired by the steppe with its kurgan stelae. The sculptor lives in Kyiv now, but still uses in his sculptures symbolic legacy of Scythians and Sarmatians, albeit in a modernized form. “I study the history of Ukraine, especially the history of the steppe peoples, I mean Sarmatians, Scythians, Pechenegs, and I think that the steppe has a great and ancient history. When they say that the Donbas is a land of mines and plants, I always retort that this is a lie, that it is rather a steppe land,” Antyp explained.
Works of Kyivan artist Diachenko feature the contrast of strict geometric forms and preternatural physicality, while Leopolitan Kapustiak looks for intrigue and surprise in sculpture, hence the variety of figurative and plastic ideas in his work. The Battle with a Rat, Bernard Meretyn’s Intersections, The Everyday Mask, An Archaic Dance – these sculptures get visitors stopping and engaging in deep meditations.
The work of Kharkivite Kochmar typically offers a synthesis of the traditional modernist topics with his own heavy emphasis on analysis and generalization of forms and their interaction with the spatial environment. Another Kharkivite Pyrohov introduces to the sculpture some features of the human living environment... Leopolitan Yarych deals with eternal themes: love, motherhood, fertility of the earth. This artist works in the fields of monumental and indoor sculpture.
“Lviv never saw this kind of exhibition before, and I believe that it will not see another one in the near future,” Yarych, who is People’s Artist of Ukraine and initiator of the exhibition, told us; he created the monument to King Danylo in Lviv, Ukraine’s first monument to Mykhailo Hrushevsky in Dolyna, Ivano-Frankivsk region, and many others. “The uniqueness of this exhibition is in it offering a cross section of the Ukrainian sculpture as created by prominent artists.”
The sculpture exhibition will run at the Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky National Museum until March 8.
