Painting in Ukraine

In the 15th and 16th centuries there emerged a Galician school of icon painting, in
which adherence to Byzantine iconography was tempered by personal interpretations,
individual variations, and Western influences. During the Renaissance icons
gradually lost their rigidity and became more realistic. The 17th century introduced
secular themes, three-dimensional forms and movement in icons.

In Ukraine portrait painting as a separate genre emerged during the Renaissance

and was strongly influenced by the icon tradition. The first portraits were those of
benefactors which were hung in churches. Portraits which were not used for religious
purposes did not emerge until the 17th century. They included official portrayals of
nobles and Cossack hetmans and officers, as well as more intimate portraits of nobles
and townspeople.

Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg was established in 1757 and it attracted

Ukrainian artists greatly. Among those who continued to pursue their careers in
Ukraine was Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861). He devoted most of his painting to
Ukrainian interests. All the works executed by him can be divided into three groups:
portraits and self-portraits, landscape paintings of Ukraine, Kazakhstan, the Aral Sea,
and genre compositions. Shevchenko’s professional skills, a faithful depiction of the
model combined with deep penetration into man’s inner world are characteristic
features of Shevchenko’s water colour portraits (“Portrait of an Unknown”, “Portrait
of N. Lunin”, “Portrait of M. Sokolovsky”, “Katya, the Kazakh girl”). Genre
compositions “Kateryna” and “Gypsy Fortune-Teller” (the latter was awarded a silver
medal by the Academy of Arts) were cast by his own poems.

During the 19th century landscape painting appeared as a separate genre and not
only in the works of T. Shevchenko. Inspired by romanticism I. Sochenko, A
.Kuindzhi, and S. Vasylkivsky recorded the pastoral setting of rural scenery while I.
Aivasovsky devoted his efforts to depicting the beauty of the sea.

The creative work of the prominent Ukrainian artist of the late 19th – early 20th
centuries, Mykola Pimonenko (1862-1912) occupies a place of note in Ukrainian
genre painting. A number of M. Pimonenko’s paintings are generalized portraits
which embody a popular ideal of a working man (“A Young Woman”, “A Reaper”).
The artist also turned to the theme of peasant labour depicting typical themes from
everyday life against the backdrop of a landscape (“Harvest-Time”, “A Ploughman”,
“Haymaking in Ukraine”).

The 20th century avant-garde movement had a direct impact on Ukrainian

painting. Artists born in Ukraine as well as those who considered themselves
Ukrainian by nationality were in its vanguard. The most prominent of them were K.
Malevich, A. Ekster, V. Tatlin who introduced suprematism, futurism and cubism into
Ukrainian painting. But in the 1930s avant-garde movement came to a halt with
introduction of social realism as the only artistic method permitted by the communist
regime. Paintings were limited to portraits of leaders and genre compositions of
happy workers and peasants.

Among those who joined social realism but added much of their own were
Kateryna Bilokur and Tetyana Yablonska. Kateryna Bilokur (1900-1961) is a highly
original Ukrainian folk artist. Her beautiful pictures of the colourful Ukrainian nature
are a significant landmark in the history of Ukrainian folk art. Bilokur’s first works
were amateurish. They were the portraits of her relatives and villagers executed with
charcoal and self-made vegetable paints. Then she took to drawing still lives and
flower pieces. Skill of selecting subject matter, vitality, fanciful composition and
harmony of colours are characteristics of these pictures and have become the main
features of all the work of the artist. Such original works as “Apples and Tomatoes”,
“Breakfast”, “Watermelon, Carrots and Flowers”, “Flowers and Grapes” are
distinguished for their freshness and verve.

The famous Ukrainian painter Tetyana Yablonska (1917-2005) established herself

as an original and outstanding artist. She became the leader of many young Ukrainian
artists in pursuit of new styles and it is this thirst for novel imaginary and plastic
means which makes her work fresh and consistent with time. Yablonska’s artistic
manner was evident even in the sketches such as “Woman with a Yoke” and
“Milkmaid” as well as in the unfinished canvas “Wedding On the Collective Farm”.
The year 1949 saw the appearance of Yablonska’s renowned canvas “Grain” which
made her famous as a first-grade painter and proved a milestone in the Soviet visual
art. The topics of her work embrace various subjects: peace and work, the happiness
of motherhood, the wisdom of old people, Man with his sorrows and joys. Half a
century ago Yablonska’s pictures catapulted her to worldwide fame. Critics still like
to draw literary parallels to her pictures. For example, they called “Bread” “the novel
of a picture,” while the canvas “Morning”, showing a girl against the backdrop of an
open window, is associated with a “poem,” and “A People’s Poem”, which depicts
life in the Ukrainian countryside, is “a people’s epic.” Her pictures resemble haiku.
Like Japanese miniatures, her canvases show an event which occurs in nature and is
valuable in itself, for example, wandering clouds or a sunset as a sign of an immortal
life and eternity.
Nowadays Ukrainian artists are free to follow any style of painting and we can
observe a mixture of different styles in their works.