The National League of Ukrainian Artists has nominated a cycle of paintings by Taras Danylych, which the artist symbolically titled “Silver Land,” for the Shevchenko Prize 2015.
Taras Danylych was born in the village of Turia Poliana, Perechyn raion, Zakarpattia oblast. After leaving a secondary school, he entered the Uzhhorod School of Applied Arts which he graduated from in the early 1960s. Among his first teachers were Vasyl Svyda, Mykola Medvetsky, and Edita Medvetska-Lutak. Danylych has been living for about half a century in the mountain village of Dubrynychi in the Uzh valley.
Incidentally, Danylych began his artistic career as a woodcarver. Later on, taking part in the exhibits of local artists and influenced by such masters of the paintbrush as Ernest Kontratovych, Andrii Kotska, Anton Koshshai, Zoltan Soltesz, Havrylo Hliuk, Volodymyr Mykyta, Yurii Hertz, Stanislav Prykhodko, and other no less brilliant representatives of the Transcarpathian school of painting, Danylych began, as he notes in his autobiography, to develop his own painting style.
One can amply see the artist’s original and particular manner in his solo exhibition at the House of the Artist. Three halls display several dozen canvases the painter has created lately.
“Just see how fantastically the artist depicts the mountains where his fellow countrymen live,” says Vasyl PEREVALSKY, People’s Painter of Ukraine, corresponding member of Ukraine’s National Academy of Arts. “The impression is that each of the figures in the picture is a concrete individual whom he knows personally. You can see here the characteristic poise of a highlander, funny facial expressions, and the colorful Hutsul apparel – all that is typical of a miniature portrait. Danylych’s pictures have something imperceptibly in common with works by the outstanding Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. But, unlike the latter, whose artworks are permeated with tragic and mystical motifs, the author of the ‘Silver Land’ cycle shows down-to-earth optimism and a serene perception of the surrounding world by his heroes – Lemkos, Boikos, and Hutsuls.”
It is known from history that Transcarpathia owes its poetic name – Silver Land – to the Ukrainian poet and thinker Vasyl Pachovsky. It is he who composed the poem Silver Bell, after the publication of which in 1938 Transcarpathia began to be called Silver Land in the art and literature circles.
By all accounts, Taras Danylych’s oeuvre is a certain continuation of the cause once pursued by a kindred-spirited poet. For each of the paintings by the talented Transcarpathian artist is full of sincere love for his native land.
The exhibit will last until February 6, 2015.
