It is important for an artist not to turn into a drawing machine

Recently Anatolii Kryvolap was no-minated by the National Union of Artists to receive Ta­ras Shev­chenko Prize. Besides, not so long ago this Ukrainian artist once again became a sensation. International auction house Phillips de Pury & Co sold the canvas by Kryvolap Horse. Night for 124,500 dollars. This is an absolute record for Ukrainian art works on the international market.

About a dozen of Kryvolap’s canvases are stored at the National Art Museum of Ukraine. One big painting is in the Vienna Art History Museum. His paintings are even presented at the house-museum of Paul McCartney in Liverpool. In Kyiv the artist’s canvases can be seen in ART-KYIV contemporary in Art Arsenal until November 13 and also at his solo exhibition that was launched on November 8 at the Kyiv gallery Art Collection.

Kryvolap lives outside the city and doesn’t often talk with the press. However, he agreed to tell The Day about his life and personal development as an artist, about color as a philosophical conception, and about fashion that now exists in art.

The artist was born in Yahotyn. In the early 1960s he entered the Art School. Then he went to the army, on his return he entered the Painting Department of the Kyiv State Art Institute. His teacher there was Viktor Puzyrkov, who advocated “total aca­de­mism.” Already at that time Kry­vo­lap felt that he would be an abstractionist. Kryvolap admits that he can not remember when painting and life became synonyms for him. He has been painting for as long as he remembers himself. There is no other activity that would bring him at least approximately the same pleasure. Painting for him is work, hobby, and passion.

Mr. Kryvolap why here at ART-KYIV contemporary your paintings stand simply near the walls and there is no signature on any of them?

“I have tough neighborhood here, as you can see. There is a huge project in form of advertising stand of Novo­pe­chersky Lypki, so I decided to brigh­ten the look of the box. I wanted it to look like some kind of workshop with life in it and not too official. There are no signatures because I ne­ver sign are my works. Why should I impose onto the visitor something he would see and fell anyway? Here are the evening waters – does it look any similar?”

It is, totally, I think.

“So why should I create a tautology when it is clear anyway that this is evening. Even if I give a name to a painting, as a special concession for a collector or gallery owner, it is always with a grain of irony in it.”

Your works are absolutely recognizable, they are difficult to confuse with somebody else’s works because of these emotional and juicy colors. What is co­lor for you?

“You know, color itself ceased to be a goal for me. It became rather an instrument with the help of which I convey a state, an emotion, mood, and finally a thought. The great help in that became abstraction, which forced to feel ‘condition in itself,’ preserving the image. Regular practice gave new reserves for the transmission of sensations and feelings in landscapes.”

How long have you been looking for color?

“I spent 15 years doing that. I began to experiment back in the institute. I was nearly expelled for those experiments then. All the years of my artistic development I haven’t been going to Ukrainian exhibitions. After all, I wasn’t interested in anyone except for Mykola Hlushchenko. He was a simply brilliant colorist. Back in my youth years I was impressed with his picture Paris Landscape. I have always been carefully considering art work of Hlu­shchen­ko.”

Did you ever want to meet him?

“I could come up to him at any moment. Personality, charisma, influence, character, color… It’s hypnotic. There is a great danger of losing yourself. It is not only the case with Hlushchenko, I have always been careful not to get close with every artist I admired. Because canvases are one thing: you can look at them for as long as you want and analyze them. But meeting the artist in person is completely different. I also often tra­veled to Moscow and looked for the works by Robert Falk, and of course looked at impressionists too. I haven’t had a mentor as such. I searched for my own style and colors. Using shades and feeling the mood I created compositions. It was both exciting and tiring. In fact, any kind of art – poetry, music, and painting – intend conveying the same things using different tools. Poetry uses words and I use color.”

“It is not only the case with Hlu­shchen­ko, I have always been careful not to get close with every artist I admired. Because canvases are one thing: you can look at them for as long as you want and analyze them. But meeting the artist in person is completely different. I also often traveled to Moscow and looked for the works by Robert Falk, and of course looked at impressionists too. I haven’t had a mentor as such. I searched for my own style and colors. Using shades and feeling the mood I created compositions. It was both exciting and tiring. In fact, any kind of art – poetry, music, and painting – intend conveying the same things using diffe­rent tools. Poetry uses words and I use color.”

Do you mean that the main mission of an artist is to find his own tool and learn how to use it?

“An artist creates an explicit fixation of the aspects of his spi­ritual and intellectual states. This is an artist’s main goal. And of course he should be able to use his tool. At the moment, I don’t have any technical problems with co­lor, I stopped searching. I try to be accurate, honest, and able to catch a good moment… It is very easy to get confused. It’s easier than it may seem. It is important for an artist not to turn into a drawing machine. Here one should completely trust his intuition and listen to his inner voice.”

When you create a painting, does the inner voice tell you how to do it?

“You never know were the painting will lead you. Sometimes something made today seems interesting but tomorrow you come to the workshop, look and it and realize that it is just horrible. Then you have to redo it completely. I can get back to a canvas for a month and a year. I wait for a right moment. Sometimes a painting is perfect right from the start, after nearly half an hour of work. I create my paintings in times of the right moment of inspiration.”

Is it possible that words would reveal the depth and essence of art, including yours? Are there good art experts in Ukraine who could analyze your works well?

“We have serious problems with that. It would be advisable for art experts to get training in the world’s best art school, read theoretical works on the art of the 20th century in the original, to visit personally the most prominent art forums in order to have an idea of the new art. Everyone has right for his own opinion. However, it’s one thing when we speak about art critics and it is totally different about subjective opinions.”

How do you personally define the genre you work in?

“In my opinion, an artist should not bother about trends and genres. I think that an artist has to discover himself. That is why, I have never even thought about the genre I work in. It is, probably, landscape, only not quite ordinary. Landscape itself started as a background for mythological and religious paintings and portraits. The Barbizon school is painting in the open air. Impressionists introduced light and emotions. Vasyl Kandinsky turned land­scape into abstraction. In the early 20th century landscape was actually crossed out from art. And now it is exciting for me to get back to that forgotten genre. I can not take nature for granted. There is no person that would be as interesting for me as nature, especially when I am tete-a-tete with it.”

What places inspire you? Where do you like to come again and again?

“I live on Lake Supiy. It is wonderful there. I can say that I settled there exactly for this reason. I made myself a workshop on the second floor. I also love the Carpathian Mountains and go there quite often. However, I haven’t figured out their mystery yet. I am working on it. The thing we talked about – I am still waiting for the right moment…”

Your daughter Hanna is also a painter. Have you influenced her choice in any way?

“No, I haven’t. For as long as I remember her, she always sat on the floor and painted. It seems as if she hasn’t let the brush out of her hand from birth.”

What is your attitude to trends like show art and schizo art?

“There is fashion in art and, maybe, there are people who are interested in things you mentioned. I don’t like epatage in art – in any form. That’s right, epatage is needed to make a name. But what is there about art? I think that apart from shock a professional has to present something else. Something that has value. This is what the artist Oleksandr Hnylytsky was for me. He always had a fine appreciation of time and reacted to problems. He had perfect ear for the modern time and great irony both towards himself and the world around him. His landscapes are fantastic. Although, Hnyly­tsky wasn’t a colorist, his artistic skills fascinate.”

How do your paintings get to such prestigious auctions?

“There is a person in Uk­raine – dealer Ihor Ab­ramovych, who knows how to promote Ukrainian art at auction. They are, after all, the final instance in pricing policy of the artist’s works. And yet we need directed movement, not only individual cases. Then both the country and the level of the art in it will be presented fully.”

Do you consider yourself a patriot?

“I think that everyone who lives in a particular country, his country, is a patriot. It is like dating a girl. What for, if you don’t like it, don’t want to date her, live with her, and marry her. The same is here. I can’t live very long outside Ukraine. No longer than a week! I go crazy. It is absolutely physiological process; I am being physically drawn here.”

In the mid 1990s there emer­ged an association of artists called Painting Reserve. Does the association make joint pro­jects, perhaps, exhibitions?

“Our group Painting Reserve was distinguished by the fact that color was all for us – the idea, the goal, and the tool. This is not a ‘counterweight’ to someone or something. It was a union of artists, who had their established views. On the group’s 10th anniversary there was an exhibition held in the National Museum. I hope there will be more opportunities like this in the future. We all go different ways, but I can say for sure that I am always excited to watch the art work of all my ‘group mates’ – Oleh Zhyvotkov, Tiberii Silvashi, Mykola Kry­ven­ko, and others.”