Figure and space

The exhibition opened in the art gallery Primus on 16, Lesi Ukrainky Street and it features the art works of Zenovii Flinta painted in 1968. The exhibition is timed to the 25th anniversary of the death of the painter, graphic artist, master of pottery, and Honored Artist of Ukraine. It was organized by friends of the master and his daughter Iryna Danyliv-Flinta, professor of Academic Painting Department at Lviv Academy of Arts.

“Flinta developed together with his colleagues of the Sixtiers and post-Sixtiers generation,” art historian Professor Roman Yatsiv told The Day. “After graduating from the Institute of Decorative and Applied Arts in the late 1960s he showed very interesting personal traits, even though he still remained within the methods and techniques taught by Roman Selsky and Karlo Zvirynsky. But back then he together with Andrii Bokotei, Ivan Marchuk, Petro Markovych, Liubomyr Medvid, and a number of other individuals, despite the fact that they were friends and tried to jointly resist (perhaps, not with very loud campaigns) the official art, developed in his own way. Flinta managed to combine in one person great passion and fondness of ceramics, understanding of this material and preferring decorative thinking in terms of composition. He, by the way, was considered to be one of the biggest influences among Ukrainian teachers in terms of methods of presenting composition as an academic discipline.”

Later, Flinta mingled the understanding of the formal elements of the layout with his ideological platform. He came from Ternopil region and, therefore, paid much attention to the wide, open horizon and very gently, poetically moved aside relief, land, and around that, the artist formed an entire philosophy.

“Flinta was very fond of such motives as a human being and substantive or natural environment,” said Yatsiv. “He often operated with such symbolic units as figure and space and played up this motif using various formal means. And it all was based on his high innate culture, very responsible attitude to colleagues and friends. He was an extremely sensitive man – he loved music, life… He was very self-absorbed – he never made jerky movements or actions… I was lucky to have a chance to communicate with him – he was a great example of how decent a person should be.”

Art critics acknowledged Flinta’s special value in art since he really had a unique creative personality.

The exhibition of paintings by Zenovii Flinta is open until April 16.