This year marks the 425th anniversary of the oldest academy in the Eastern Europe, the Ostroh Academy National University. It revives in the spirit of modern achievements in education of the traditions of the Slavic-Greek-Latin academy founded by the Ostroh Prince Vasyl-Kostiantyn, which later became a model for the first academies in Kyiv and Moscow. A one-man show by Kyiv artist Yury Nikitin at the Ostroh Academy Spiritual center, which is to become an ecumenical church after consecration, was timed to coincide with the anniversary.
A practicing icon painter captivated by the Ukrainian baroque techniques and decorative motifs, the painter created an exposition corresponding to the style of the interior as well as to the spirit and history of the so-called Volyn Athens. Yury Nikitin has long been familiar with Ostroh and its artistic treasures. In 1986 on the initiative of the Ostroh National Historical and Cultural Preserve five works were purchased from the artist for its constant modern painting exhibit. Now they are exhibited at one of the preserve’s branches, the Museum of Book and Printing at the Ostroh’s Lutsk Tower. Preserve employee Mykola Bendiuk, an experienced restorer well informed on the history of the Ostroh region, came to Kyiv for talks with the author. This meeting for Yury Nikitin was not only a pleasant private and professional contact but an impulse for Ostroh reminiscences concerning his own work. In 1997 he became laureate of the Ostroh Academy’s contest to paint a portrait of Princess Halshka of Ostroh, patroness of the Academy, a legendary person of Ukraine’s history in the sixteenth century whose fate inspired writers and painters of the Romantic Era. Nikitin’s Halshka was included in the Ostroh Academy collection and is now represented at the exhibition.
This time the attention to the artist’s creative work was again rewarded with not only aesthetic impressions. Nikitin’s Cherubic Pilgrim will remain in the Academy after the exhibition as an anniversary present. Cherubic Pilgrim is how contemporaries referred to the eighteenth century philosopher Hryhory Skovoroda. Nikitin depicts him sitting under an apple-tree bearing ripe fruit reminding one both of baroque garlands and the fruits of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
The portrait’s autumnal colors are supported in the exposition by warm shades of the paintings on leather, by the yellow leaves in the encaustic Autumnal Allegory, and the icons’ golden halos. One of them, The Unfading Blossom, giving the title to the whole exhibition, is decorated with pastes and reproduces the beauty and splendor of Ukrainian baroque icons. Its festive coloring glorifies not only the Mother of God’s virgin beauty but the beauty of the world into which our Savior came through His Holy Mother as through the gates.
The plot of the L egend of the Mandrake is based upon unreal facts from absolutely real medieval sources. Mandrake is an indispensable feature in the medieval Bestiaries, treatises on animals and plants both well known and legendary. The legends of the mandrake’s curing powers were widely spread in Europe. The medieval spirit is also stressed in the painting by the presence of a castle, Vezha Murovana at the Castle Hill in Ostroh. The vegetable kingdom of the painting also realistically depicts the plants decorating Ostroh landscape in early summer.
In addition to the Legend of the Mandrake, where Ostroh viewers were happy to recognize the silhouette of their famous castle, there is one more painting represented at the exhibition that is directly connected with the Ostroh cultural legacy, The Croatian Bunch of Grapes. Its composition includes the Christ as vintner motif frequent in the icons of the Ostroh School.
The idea of Nikitin’s one-man show in Ostroh was implemented with the help of the Kyiv Praktik Agency. Moreover, it presented a series of publications on modern culture to the Academy’s’ library as a part of the Information Society of Ukraine program.
