Pictures filled with time

An exhibit of paintings and graphics from the private collections of the Lutsk artist Karel Yakubek recently opened at the National Taras Shevchenko Museum, where a vernissage was also held. This is the first time that so many of the Volyn master’s works, created between the 1940s and 1970s, have been shown in Kyiv. The large exhibit was made possible by the Volyn Oblast Society of Painters of Ukraine and the Volyn Association in Kyiv.

The event turned into an informal gathering of people from Volyn: among the “Volyniaks” who came to Kyiv from Lutsk were art critic Zoia Navrotska, university lecturer Iryna Konstankevych, and art historian and compiler of the book accompanying the exhibit Oleh Sydor. Among the members of the Volynian “diaspora” in Kyiv, who attended the opening, included The Day’s editor-in-chief Larysa Ivshyna, MP Volodymyr Karpuk, theater director Serhii Arkhypchuk, and Merited Artist of Ukraine Svitlana Myrvoda.

Karel Yakubek was born in Uzhhorod. One of his first teachers was the talented painter Mykhailo Rozenberg. Yakubek perfected his artistic skills in the Free Academy of Art in the town of Nagybanya (now Baia-Mare, Romania,) and later at the Budapest Academy of Art.

The artist’s work consists of portraits, landscape paintings, and still lifes. However, as art specialists have noted, landscape painting has become key in the author’s works: using a masterful technique and a broad color palette Yakubek portrays mountain panoramas warmed by the presence of people.

At the age of 83, the artist lives an inner creative life and is eager to continue his work.

Displayed at the exhibit were the works of his Transcarpathian and Lutsk periods.

“When Karel came to Lutsk in 1964,” Navrotska explained, “the city had a rather sporadic artistic life. He brought the traditions of Eastern and Western Europe with him, experience, and inspiration, and he immediately propelled Volyn to the European artistic level. Karel Yakubek experienced Paris with his soul, shared the development of art with Munich’s traditions, and studied in Budapest and Baia-Mare. When you look at the works he created, you sense European esthetics — the esthetics of a free person, as if he had never lived under the Soviet totalitarian regime. Look at one of his landscape paintings, where there are only clouds, sun, and water. What harmony and taste! I look at his pictures and become faint from the simplicity and unpretentiousness, which today seem to be unique in the 21st century.

“These works are valuable above all because they were painted in the 1950s and 1960s and are filled with time, so to speak, and aged, having absorbed the spirit of the era,” said artist Volodymyr Harbuz. “This is why they are interesting. We are living in a globalized technical world, with different speeds, where various modern trends in painting appear, and obviously modern artists perceive the world differently. Karel Yakubek’s works — his landscape paintings, still lifes, and portraits — are taken from life. This living impulse is felt; and this authenticity and direct contact with God are portrayed and preserved there.”

If the works of artists who are based in the various capitals of the Ukrainian lands were constantly exhibited in Kyiv, this would definitely help Ukrainians get to know each other better.