The obscure Novakivsky
50 works by this painter are on exhibit at the Lviv Art Gallery
The 50 little-known works by Oleksa Novakivsky on exhibit in Lviv come from the Novakivsky family private collection. Until now, they have been tucked away in the storerooms of the National Museum. Novakivsky’s granddaughter Ivanna Novakivska told The Day that the exhibit is dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the painter’s death.
Oleksa Novakivsky was shaped as an artist by the work of an outstanding Polish painter, one of the most distinguished symbolists, Jacek Malczewski. Jan Matejko and Stanislaw Wyspianski were also among his major influences. He was educated in Odesa and at the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts. Novakivsky’s artistic manner was formed as he assimilated and interpreted the principles of impressionism.
For a long time the painter worked in the village of Mogila near Krakow. In 1913 he moved to Lviv. Besides painting, Novakivsky was also engaged in teaching. In the 1920s, he headed the arts department of the Lviv Ukrainian University, and in 1923 he founded a school of arts in Lviv, which became the center of painting in western Ukraine and produced an entire constellation of famous artists, including Roman Selsky and Hryhorii Smolsky.
The exhibit comprises portraits of Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky; the historian, educator, and public figure Oleksandr Barvinsky; the painter, master of parade and chamber portrait Dmytro Levytsky, as well as a number of pictures representing the artist’s muse and wife Anna Maria (Painter’s Wife Wearing Pink, Deep in Thought, Before Confession, Portrait with Prayerbook) and Novakivsky’s self-portraits. The exhibit also includes Mother of Mercy, created by Novakivsky as the altarpiece of the Blessed Virgin in St. George’s Cathedral in Lviv, and a symbol of Ukraine.
“Metropolitan Sheptytsky was obsessed with the idea of founding an Academy of Arts in Lviv, but he didn’t see anyone among the contemporary artists who could head it,” said Volodymyr Ovishchuk, Ph.D. in Art History and Criticism, professor, corresponding member of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts. “Sheptytsky saw charisma and a talent for teaching in Novakivsky, and thus invited him to move to Lviv.”
The highlight of the inauguration was a miniature performance by the actors from the Zankovetska Theater, the People’s Artist of Ukraine Bohdan Kozak and actor Bohdan Revkevych. they played several fragments from the book written by the painter’s friend Ivan Holubovsky, who had incorporated his conversations with Novakivsky in a collection of short stories entitled Rozmakhom Mohutnikh Kryl (“Spreading His Strong Wings”).
“Art is impossible without form, and Novakivsky’s works are an expressive form emphasizing the deep essence of the phenomenon he handles, be it a portrait or a landscape,” said Bohdan Kozak, laureate of the Shevchenko Prize. He also added that he always took his students to the Oleksa Novakivsky Museum to show what form is, and how they should search for it on stage, via plastique, gesture, speech rhythm, and the way of thinking.
The exhibit at the Lviv Art Gallery will last till January 15. On that very day, the catalog of little-known works by Novakivsky will be presented.
