The Carpathians: the artist Vadym Odainyk’s second love

Art lovers and specialists have always been interested in the personality of Vadym Odainyk, who left behind timeless works of world caliber. The artist was born in Odesa in the summer of 1925, and five years later the Odainyks moved to Kyiv. As a 17-year old, Vadym fought in Soviet tank units. Wounded several times, he was decorated for his outstanding courage and successful combat operations.

After the war, in 1946, the artist began his professional studies. He enrolled in the Kyiv Art Institute and his diploma work Dear Guests was shown at the XI Art Exhibit. He became a member of the Association of Painters of Ukraine in 1958 and sent his works to numerous exhibits. In 1971 he was awarded the title Honored Painter of Ukraine. Later he was nominated for the State Shevchenko Prize in the sphere of art for the works Troista Music (traditional trio of violin, flute, and cimbalom), Red Forge, Spring, and Hutsul Wedding.

In the 1970s Odainyk had a number of solo exhibits in Poland, Yugoslavia, Austria, and Japan. From the viewpoint of foreign art collectors, his works stood out from those of other artists by their unusual folkloric themes and honestly depicted nature of the Carpathian land. The charismatic color elements of these works cannot go unnoticed.

Odainyk’s painting on the theme of Hutsul life (Troista Music) won the artist the title of People’s Painter, and in 1979 he received the prestigious Diploma of the Art Academy of the USSR. However, the artist’s hidden creative biography, never described in monographs and albums, was not so smooth: a muted struggle was being waged between the artist and his colleagues for his own art vision, unique painting style, and his inexhaustible interest in picturesque, authentically national Ukrainian themes. The lengthy period of conflict drained the artist, but he did not betray his individuality and continued to paint in his own unique manner.

An extremely subtle understanding of color, exquisite mastery of the art palette, and wide spectrum of folk themes, always interpreted in a bright, emotional, and cheerful way, comprise Odainyk’s personal style. His sunny “great love of life” is vividly felt in nearly all his works.

His words “My wife is my first love, the Carpathians are my second love” became almost catchwords, so frequently did he repeat them. His regular creative journeys to the Carpathians, starting in 1949, became a tradition for Odainyk. The towns of Yavoriv, Kosiv, Verkhnii and Nyzhnii Apshy, and Zhabie were places that inspired his numerous landscape paintings in which he depicted Hutsul men and women and details of everyday folk life. Every spring and autumn in the Carpathians provided the artist with wonderful material that was later turned into great canvases in the artist’s studio: Carpathian Motif, Chorna Tysa, Holiday in the Mountains, Synii Psiol, and Rain in the Carpathians.

The vivid nature of the Carpathian land, sharpened by the artist’s emotionalism, imbues these landscape paintings with a special decorative intonation and emphasizes the expressiveness of the manner of execution. Short daubed strokes, always generalized form, and triumph of red, yellow, and orange colors are apparent in the autumnal Chorna Tysa, Road to Kosiv, and numerous variants under the general title The Carpathians.

The refined pastel color combinations of the somewhat lyrical landscape and a mountain current are the elements of Bokorashi. The semi- abstract landscape In the Mountains is almost a Gobelin tapestry featuring the golden grasses of autumn and black mountains brightened with a sudden rainbow. Each form has a semiotic-emotional meaning. The dark mountains are used as a sort of tuning fork for the exalted soaring of purples, pinks, and yellows.

Odainyk rarely traced out every beautiful leaf, flower, or grass. These landscapes, like music, flow in a natural and light manner, from the heart. The painter always worked very fast, always in one or two sessions, and he preferred improvisation. His paintbrush, faintly touching the carton or canvas of the picture, reflected the moment itself, the joy and unexpectedness of life.

Interesting, all these features are also characteristic of his daughter Oksana who not only paints but sings. In the 1970s the painter maximally approached the technique of Impressionist painting. One can see an internal affinity with Impressionism in his landscape paintings and still lifes of the 1960s and in the genre pictures of the following decade: Carpathian Musicians, Newlyweds, and Village Fair.

In the landscape paintings Autumn and Synii Psiol the Impressionistic frankness of the color becomes the main theme — in fact, the sole theme of these works. Kinship with the French school is especially vivid in such touching works as the exalted yet lyrical white- and-blue portrait of his daughter, painted with broad strokes, entitled In the Garden, and the joyous summer town landscape Drizzle, painted almost completely in pinks and blues. In addition to the painter’s natural predilection for Impressionism, his mind-set, cheerfulness, frankness, and emotionalism influenced the general mood of these pictures.

Odainyk’s heartfelt communication with people and his interest in folkways and holidays are the source of this painter’s numerous Hutsul- themed works. Craftswomen, Hutsul Woman from Yavoriv, Carpathian Musicians, and Troista Music, the work for which the artist received the Diploma of the Academy of Arts, form the golden treasury of his oeuvre. The artist painted monumental pictures that have become genuine exemplars of the national art heritage.

The feast of life and the joys of love and youth reign in the works Before the Wedding, Newlyweds, and Hutsul Wedding. The artist finds an interesting resolution in the latter work. Here he depicts almost all the village residents following in the wake of the festive procession of the newly married couple, with the wonderful and mighty Carpathians in the background. The whole procession led by the happy couple is moving on festively arrayed horses as though directly at the viewer: their parents and guests are near them, wearing Hutsul costumes. A barrel of wedding wine, embroidered towels, the bride’s dowry, and presents are nearby. The dynamics of these pictures enable the spectator to feel the unique atmosphere of naturalness, freedom, and particular inner purity of the characters in the Transcarpathian paintings of Vadym Odainyk.

The so-called struggle against nationalism in the USSR was likely the reason behind the gifted artist’s death in the early 1980s. Odainyk’s works are held in the collections of nearly a hundred museums throughout the world. Kyushu and Gekoso art galleries (Japan,) Matthew Gallery (Great Britain), the State Tretyakov Gallery (Russia) and numerous private collections in Austria, Italy, France, and the US are proud to own his canvases.