VIII. The tradition of ukrainian landscape art
In Ukrainian art conventionalized landscape elements were used in icons, while some of the earliest landscapes were settings for the 16th and 17th-century religious engravings. Landscape painting did not, however, become an independent genre in Ukrainian art until the 19th century. Romanticism inspired artists to record faithfully the pastoral scenery of thatched-roof cottages and the surrounding countryside. Among them were Ivan Soshenko, Taras Shevchenko, and Vasilii Shternberg. With time two types of landscape art developed, the poetic and the epic. Among the 19th-century artists who devoted much of their work to Ukrainian landscapes were two artists of non-Ukrainian origin, Ivan Aivazovsky, who is famous for his marine paintings, and Arkhyp Kuindzhi, who painted Romantic moonlit scenes. Other Ukrainian artists who devoted their efforts to landscape painting were Serhii Vasylkivsky, Ivan Pokhytonov, and Serhii Svitoslavsky. In the early 20th century Petro Levchenko painted intimate lyrical views in impressionist colors capturing the fleeting effects of light in both urban and rural scenes. Vasyl H. Krychevsky and Abram Manevich also worked in the impressionist manner. Symbolism was dominant in the fantasy landscapes of Yukhym Mykhailiv. In Western Ukraine Ivan Trush painted idyllic sunsets and panoramic views only slightly influenced by impressionist colors. In the 1930s, after socialist realism was imposed as the only sanctioned artistic method in the USSR, landscape painting was limited to views of collective farms and industrial sites. Pure landscape painting was revived in Ukraine only after the Second World War. Of the Ukrainian landscape artists who worked outside their homeland, the most prominent was Oleksa Hryshchenko, who achieved recognition in France for his landscapes and seascapes, painted mostly in an expressionist manner... Learn more about the tradition of Ukrainian landscape art by visiting the following entries:
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LANDSCAPE ART. The depiction of natural scenery. In Ukrainian art conventionalized landscapes and architectural settings became part of the scenes in icons illustrating the lives of saints. During the Renaissance landscapes in icons became less schematized and began looking more like the surrounding Ukrainian countryside. Architecture and local scenery were important elements in the icons of Ivan Rutkovych and Yov Kondzelevych. Landscapes also appeared as backgrounds to portraits. Some of the earliest landscapes were settings for religious engravings. At first they were variations on landscapes borrowed from Western European models, but later, local elements emerged. In 1669 Master Illia depicted the Dnieper River in his engraving. Similar engravings by Leontii Tarasevych showed an even greater preoccupation with local scenery. Depictions of churches and secular buildings appeared in the engraved theses produced in the 17th and 18th centuries by the Kyivan Cave Monastery Press. In the 18th century, landscapes gained greater prominence in religious pictures. Landscape painting become an independent genre in Ukrainian art in the 19th century... |
Landscape art |
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SVITOSLAVSKY, SERHII, b 6 October 1857 in Kyiv, d 19 September 1931 in Kyiv. Landscape painter. After studying at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (1875-83) he returned to Kyiv. From 1884 he took part in the exhibitions of the Peredvizhniki society, and in 1891 he became a member of the society. During the Revolution of 1905 he contributed to the satirical magazine Shershen' and helped students expelled from the Kyiv Art School. His realist landscapes are noted for their vibrant colors. Some of his best-known works are Dnieper Rapids (1885), Oxen in the Field (1891), Street in a County Town (1895), On a River (1909), Ferry on the Dnieper (1913), Vicinity of Kiev: Winter, Windmill, and The Dnieper at Dusk. His travels in Central Asia in the late 1890s gave rise to a group of landscapes, including Steppe, Goat Herd in the Mountains, and Ships of the Desert (1900). After his eyesight deteriorated in the early 1920s, Svitoslavsky gave up painting. Albums of his works were published in Kyiv in 1955 and 1989... |
Serhii Svitoslavsky |
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LEVCHENKO, PETRO, b 11 July 1856 in Kharkiv, d 27 January 1917 in Kharkiv. Painter and pedagogue. He studied art in Kharkiv under Dmytro Bezperchy, at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts (1878-83), and in Paris and Rome. From 1886 he lectured at the Kharkiv Painting School. He was a member of the Society of South Russian Artists and a participant in almost all of the exhibitions of the Peredvizhniki (1886-1904), and from 1900 his works displayed the influence of the impressionists. Levchenko did some 800 landscapes, primarily of Ukraine (such as A Deserted Place, Night: A Cottage in Moryntsi, A Ukrainian Village, In the Kharkiv Region, A Street in Putyvl, and The Yard of Saint Sophia Cathedral), but also painted abroad (such as A Street in Paris and Seacoast: Naples), as well as still lives and genre paintings. A posthumous retrospective exhibition of 700 of his paintings was held in Kharkiv in 1918. Monographs about him were written by M. Pavlenko (1927), Yu. Diuzhenko (1958), and M. Bezkhutry (1984)... |
Petro Levchenko |
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TRUSH, IVAN, b 17 January 1869 in Vysotske, Brody county, Galicia, d 22 March 1941 in Lviv. Painter, community figure, and art and literary critic; son-in-law of Mykhailo Drahomanov. After studying at the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts (1891-7) under Leon Wyczolkowski and Jan Stanislawski he lived in Lviv, where he was active in Ukrainian artistic circles and community life. A friend of Ivan Franko, he organized the Society for the Advancement of Ruthenian Art and the Society of Friends of Ukrainian Scholarship, Literature, and Art and their exhibitions; copublished the first Ukrainian art magazine, Artystychnyi vistnyk; painted many portraits for the Shevchenko Scientific Society; lectured on art and literature; and contributed articles toLiteraturno-naukovyi vistnyk, Dilo, and Ukrainische Rundschau. He traveled widely: he visited Kyiv several times (he taught briefly at Mykola I. Murashko's Kyiv Drawing School in 1901), Crimea (1901-4), Italy (1902, 1908), and Egypt and Palestine (1912). Trush was an impressionist, noted for his original use of color. A major part of his large legacy (over 6,000 paintings) consists of landscapes... |
Ivan Trush |
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MYKHAILIV, YUKHYM, b 27 October 1885 in Oleshky, Tavriia gubernia, d 15 July 1935 in Kotlas, Arkhangelsk oblast, RSFSR. Symbolist painter, graphic artist, and art scholar. He studied in Moscow at the Stroganov Applied Arts School (1902-6) and the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (1906-10). In the 1910s he began contributing poetry to Ukrainian journals and designing book and magazine covers and illustrations. From 1917 he lived in Kyiv, where he was active in the Ukrainian Scientific Society, directed an arts and crafts school (from 1923), and headed the All-Ukrainian Committee for the Preservation of Monuments of Antiquity and Art, the Leontovych Music Society (1921-4), and the Kyiv branch of the Association of Artists of Red Ukraine. Mykhailiv painted or drew over 300 works. Among them there are three prominent themes: the Ukrainian national revival, the Ukrainian past, and death. Mykhailiv was arrested in 1934 by the NKVD and exiled to the Soviet Arctic, where he died. A book about him (ed Yu. Chaplenko), with reproductions of his works, was published in New York in 1988... |
Yukhym Mykhailiv |
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HRYSHCHENKO, OLEKSA, b 2 April 1883 in Krolevets, Chernihiv gubernia, d 28 January 1977 in Vence, France. Modernist painter, art scholar, and author. While specializing in biology at Kyiv University and Moscow University, he studied painting with Serhii Svitoslavsky in Kyiv and K. Yuon in Moscow. He became involved in the modernist art movement in Russia. During a brief stay in Paris in 1911 he met A. Lhote, Alexander Archipenko, and Le Fauconnier and became interested in cubism. From 1913 to 1914 he studied in Italy and wrote several studies of Italian primitive artists and the relation between the icon and Western art. During the Revolution of 1917, Hryshchenko became professor of the State Art Studios in Moscow and was offered the directorship of the Tretiakov Gallery, but he escaped from Russia via Crimea to Turkey. From 1919 to 1921 he lived in Istanbul, where he painted hundreds of watercolors. In 1921 he moved to France. In 1927 he settled in Cagnes in southern France. By this time he had changed his cubist style to a more dynamic expressionism, distinguished by cascades of exotic oriental colors... |
Oleksa Hryshchenko |
The preparation, editing, and display of the IEU entries featuring the tradition of Ukrainian landscape art were made possible by the financial supportof the CANADIAN FOUNDATION FOR UKRAINIAN STUDIES.