Film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors celebrates its anniversary

As a reminder, the legendary film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors was shot by Serhii Parajanov in 1964 at the Kyiv-based Dovzhenko Film Studio. This is a screening of Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky’s eponymous novelette. The shooting took place in real Hutsul houses in the vicinity of the village Kryvorivnia, Verkhovyna raion, Ivano-Frankivsk oblast. This is the place where Kotsiubynsky wrote his novelette.

To mark the anniversary of the release of Parajanov’s film the Khmelnytsky Art Museum (within the framework of the project “New Acquisitions”) opened the exhibit of graphic works created by the famous Yakutovych family.

The spacious hall of the museum; white-and-black, sometimes colored, works; the screen shows fragments of Parajanov’s poetic film. The portrait of the production designer Heorhii Yakutovych, created by Bohdan Pukii in the series “Noted Graphic Artists of Ukraine,” takes an important place in the museum.

The exposition shows 24 works, including Yakutovych’s engravings not only to Kotsiubynsky’s work, but also Vasyl Stefanyk’s short stories, and Dmytro Pavlychko’s fairytales in verse. And of course, one of the most famous works of the artist, the linocut Lasso. This work has been topical in all times. The linocut shows Hutsuls, who perform the victorious bellicose Ukrainian dance in a dense, unbreakable group. The followers of Heorhii Yakutovych’s creative work assert that the performance is depicted on a mountain for a reason, because the mountain in his creative work is a perfection of folk spirit. Along with the mountains, the artist’s works show valleys. Graphic portraits of average people, from his travels across Carpathian villages, are presented in the series “People of Dzembroni Village.”

The exhibit shows as well the sculpture portrait of Heorhii Yakutovych’s son Serhii, People’s Artist of Ukraine and Shevchenko Prize winner. The sculpture was created by Serhii Kliapetura, a noted artist from Kamianets-Podilsky.

According to Assistant Director of the Khmelnytsky Art Museum Larysa Chernova, the museum shows for the first time the works by Heorhii’s wife Olha Yakutovych. The master’s works include illustrations to Alexei Tolstoy’s novelette Nikita’s Childhood and works from the cycle “Russian and Ukrainian folk songs.”

“At the exhibit you can see linocuts, printed graphic works, etchings, lithographs, xylographs, and one pen drawing. It should be noted that even the etching technique was applied in different ways in the works. So, Heorhii Yakutovych used this technique for the most part to illustrate Vasyl Stefanyk’s works. With the help of the pictures created in this technique the master revealed both the tenderness and beauty of one work, and the sadness and tragedy of the other. Tension was created with the help of the clash of white and black planes – this is the pinnacle of mastery!” Larysa Chernova underlines.

The museum’s administration plans to make a big creative project jointly with other museums, to represent the best works of the Yakutovych family.