Through the Glass Mist

The Griffin Gallery hosts a Joy Embracing Sorrow exhibition of three female artists belonging to one creative dynasty: Lidiya Mytiayeva (1923-1996; the exhibition is timed to coincide with the eightieth anniversary of her birth), her daughter, Tamila Moskovka, and granddaughter, Ivanna Moskovka. The founder of the dynasty was among the most acclaimed Ukrainian artists working with glass, and her successors are painters.

The works by People’s Artist of Ukraine Lidiya Mytiayeva are characterized by virtuoso technique, unexpected solutions, and amazingly elegant composition. Though all of them are absolutely functional, they look more like sculpture than glassware. Tamila Moskovka displays a series of her original romantic landscapes. Her absolutely realistic churches and castles are anything but mere places of interests for tourists. However, one can find as many churches of another kind in Tamila’s paintings: fantastic, symbolic, or spiritual ones. Ivanna Moskovka, young painter, works in virtually every existing genre. For the current exhibition she chose a major decorative series: flowers that are not gathered in ceremonious bouquets but fall from the sky in never-ending colorful waterfalls.