Petro Sypniak: Sometimes I feel like denying myself
During “Lviv’s Days in Kyiv” the Mystetska Zbirka Gallery hosts the famous artist’s exhibit
It has been three decades since Petro Sypniak’s original works became known in Ukraine and abroad. This artist’s vernissages in France, the Czech Republic, Germany, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Poland, Belgium, and Italy enjoyed great success, too. Art critics note the painter’s professional mastery. His every work combines richness of content and a high level of execution technique. The Mystetska Zbirka Gallery has now put on display 26 canvases he has painted in the past years.
“You won’t find one unifying conception or theme in my work. Speaking of the trend and the technique of painting, I must admit that I’m always in search of something new,” revealed Sypniak to The Day. “It seems to me that every artist must experiment with colors, lights, and strokes. Sometimes you feel like denying yourself. For example, the pictures of my 1993 series Diistvo (Performance) are the absolute opposite of my present work and the things I painted before the 1990s.
“I don’t think that an artist should stick to one style. My artistic technique is permeated with my own ideas of space and volume. At the start of my career, I always felt a lack of paints, because they were quite pricey. That’s why now, when I can afford to use as much as I can, I am very liberal with paints. For example, I can paint a tree using one color only, operating with the density and texture of strokes only, and render the vibration of light and diversity of hues by means of a three-dimensional image alone.”
Born in a small village of Lany near Halych, as a little boy Sypniak imbibed the beauty of nature around him, and he also felt part and parcel of national history. Perhaps due to this, Ukrainian chumaks (wagoners and traders), heroes of many Ukrainian folk songs and legends, have become one of Sypniak’s main topics in painting. Chumak-inspired painting named The Rest (1989) was his first success at the exhibit of Ukrainian fine arts Lviv’91 – Revival.
Several pieces of his “chumak epic” are also exhibited in Kyiv, such as A Chumak and Chumaks at Dawn. One is astonished at the author’s ability to establish a subtle connection between the past and the present and to capture the harmony between man and nature, like in his landscapes A Spring Day, The Way Home, Apple Orchard, June, and Willows. His paintings are marked with a subtle feeling of the macro-world, perspective, and shades. There are certain elements in Sypniak’s pictures that are impregnated with elements of traditional Ukrainian art. Successive layers of paint create a unique 3-D relief of the surface. It looks as if you only have to reach out – and you’ll touch the sky, and the sun rays sifting from behind a cloud will warm you up (Morning in the Carpathians). And then you’ll catch the echo of chumak songs: The wagons are creaking, the yokes are clanking, The gray oxen bellowing; The young chumaks are behind them, Swaying their whips... (The Chumaks).
The Christmas cycle, represented by Christmas Eve and Christmas in the Carpathians has a lot in common with Gogol’s Evenings on a Farm near Dykanka, while three paintings showing scenes of Lviv life (Rainy Streets of Lviv, A Bus Stop, and A Streetcar in Lviv) have captured Lviv’s unique, cafe-like atmosphere.
The exhibit will be open until January 24.
