Matvei Vaisberh’s exhibit “Sparrows, hippos, and other things” takes place in Kyiv
Gallery Tryptych Art has launched a solo exhibit of a famous artist, representative of the Kyiv avant-garde, Matvei Vaisberh. The exposition is entitled “Sparrows, hippos, and other things.” It shows the works the artist has created in the past year. The genres of the works vary, they include landscapes, portraits, composition, performed in oils, as well as a graphic series called “Seven Days.” According to the artist, they all belong to one genre, life in different aspects.
Vaisberh told The Day that his self-portrait with his son during a chess game evokes the warmest feelings in him. “I like all the works. This is how my life manifests itself, messages from one period of time to another,” the artist says. “Anything can inspire me to create a new canvas. This may be a word, a new spot, or some new events in my life.”
Along with the pictures of abstract notions of human virtues and unique landscapes, the picture of a hippo draws one’s attention. It turned out that it shows a portrait of the 54-year-old she-hippo living in the Kyiv Zoo. The artist had to wait for two years till she goes outside in order to paint her.
Head of the gallery Tetiana Savchenko noted that Vaisberh is an artist who does not seek to satisfy the needs of the public tastes: “This is high art, and one ought to be prepared for it. In order to perceive Matvei Vaisberh, you should know the history of art and take interest in it, because his works have some things in common with the works of humanist of the Renaissance, like Giotto, Georges de La Tour, and Boccaccio. He is not only an artist, he is a humanist philosopher. His creative works are far from routine, they touch the questions of being.”
In opinion of art expert Dmytro Korsun, Vaisberh is a great artist of the European scale. “Above all, Vaisberh is a book illustrator. He created illustrations for Jose Ortega y Gasset, Dostoyevsky, and Psalter. Those illustrations are remarkable by their existential mood, modernist ways of presenting the material, and generalized decision. In large easel painting he reveals his best qualities, but moves to significant philosophical topics. This is an artist who has an inborn feeling of history, his favorite epoch is Re-naissance. Vaisberh has much of the Renaissance aesthetics. Freedom of quotations is typical of postmodernism. We have seen this previously, on the canvases of Piero della Francesca, Masaccio, Giotto. Vaisberh resolves this in his own way, with the help of different means, but he thinks about the same things. He is trying to resolve the same problems as the man of the 21st century. He has different ways of expression, more acuteness and drama. However, he remains an old-time master.”
None of the gallery’s visitors remains indifferent to the artist’s works. According to artist Petro Lebedynets, “Vaisberh is always unpredictable and original.” Art connoisseurs can enjoy the originality of his works at the Tryptych Art Gallery till October 18.
