Religious Portrait In a Secular Setting

The Fund to Promote the Development of the Arts supported by the New Formation All-Ukrainian Public Association of Entrepreneurs opened an exhibit of works by Iryna Lysenko-Tkachuk on the eve of Festival of the Protection of the Virgin Mary. The choice of organizers cannot be called random. A former student of the Kyiv Arts Institute and of such famous masters as Oleksandr Lopukhov and Serhiy Hryhoriev, the artist has been actively exhibiting since 1976. Her still lifes, landscapes, and easel pictures made in quite individual technique, perhaps not accepted by all, enable you to feel the influence of old masters and have always been popular. In Ukraine and abroad her works can be seen in private collections and galleries from the US and Canada to Germany and Saudi Arabia. However, wide fame came to Lysenko-Tkachuk in the second half of the 1990s, when she began to refer to the hoary but rather forgotten Ukrainian tradition of the religious portrait. Here several factors come together. First, society began to show broad interest in its own history (in the portrait gallery created by Iryna Lysenko-Tkachuk the images, say, of Mykhailo Hrushevsky and Simon Petliura). Secondly, these years were marked by the revival of religious and spiritual life. And the artist’s portraits of Ukrainian religious hierarchy the Holy Patriarchs Mstyslav, Volodymyr, Iosyp Slipy, Metropolitan Volodymyr, Cardinal Myroslav Lubachivsky, and Bishop Lubomyr Huzar became events of truly spiritual art. And thirdly, quite appropriate in these works appeared certain inclination of Lysenko-Tkachuk to beauty, the refinement of colors peculiar to her manner, and poetic perception of the world. And, finally, it is not bad at all that New Formation, which in the next five years hopes to “become one of the most influential associations of entrepreneurs in Ukraine for optimization of the environment and conditions of business development,” is also trying to support the arts and local artists. The main thing is for this to be not only on holidays.