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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Solo for a Duet of Hermits

13 November, 2012 - 00:00

Ivetta Kliuchkovska. Reminiscence, 1988

An exhibit of Lviv artists Volodymyr Pinihin and Ivetta Kliuchkovska is currently underway in Kyiv's One-Street Museum exhibition hall.

One publication called Volodymyr Pinihin a “hermit known the world over.” This is no exaggeration. Although his last personal exhibit was held in Kyiv in 1987 and his daughter Ivetta is now displaying her works in the capital for the first time, the geography of their exhibitions is truly impressive – from America to Japan.

Pinihin's images are both intellectual and sensual. In a labyrinth of fine, intertwined lines one can see half-real, half-mythical – bird women with powerful, hostile beaks, mysterious knights clad in fine ornamental armor, chariots, towers, hideous insects, flying fish, and ships with women's breasts instead of sails. All this is in movement, struggle, attack, defense, hypnosis, and terror.

Heavily populated by half-man/half monsters along with magic signs and symbols, each painting represents an act of great human tragedy. Volodymyr Pinihin's cosmogony means transcending the limits of subconscious fear, removing layers, and overcoming the self. Numerous allusions evoke The Bible, great epics, and legends. They, like the eternal books, are meant to be reread and revisited many times.

Pinihin's artistic intuition is amazing - he painted his disturbing lithograph, “April Premonitions,” only a few months before the Chornobyl tragedy. Living on the edge breeds a kind of solitude – limited contacts with people, caution concerning fashion, and a keen sense of nature.

Father and daughter have much in common. Both graduated from the Lviv Printing Institute and became graphic artists. Ivetta Kliuchkovska inherited her father's perseverance, hard work, restlessness, and inquisitive mind. Both are avid bibliophiles and collectors of knowledge, impressions, and things. Before beginning a new project both undergo a long period of preparation by thoroughly studying the objects to be depicted with scrupulous accuracy in detail.

Ivetta's works are more severe and laconic than her father's. Woman is the dominant image in her works. Like the artist herself – a wonderful, slim woman who protects her family from trouble and raises her son – her heroines bravely combat life's vulgarity and brutality. “A woman's life is an act of heroism,” she says, commenting on her works. But it is also love, care, and tenderness. Her etchings emanate warmth and kindness while depicting children's most fabulous and untroubled dreams.

The current exhibition contains many nudes, but the naked female body does not appear indecent. They have a primal beauty. One comes at least to understand that Volodymyr Pinihin's hypertrophied sensuality and the chaste, reserved heroines of Ivetta Kliuchkovska are but two sides of one and the same nakedness of feeling shared by this wonderful dynasty of Lviv graphic artists.

 

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