“A Parisian handsome man, bohemian, and painter”
What was the path of Ukrainian artist Mykola Hlushchenko to art like?
In September 1901 future painter Mykola Hlushchenko was born in a town with long-time Cossack traditions, Novomoskovsk, Katerynoslav region (Donetsk oblast). Having studied in a drawing class of Commercial School in Yuzivka (currently Donetsk), in 1918 during the complicated revolutionary events in Ukraine he joined the Ukrainian army and, before he had time to fight, he found himself in a Polish POW camp, from which in 1919 “without any documents and means of living” 18-year-old Mykola Hlushchenko got to Germany.
Soon he became a student of Hans Baluschek’s private art school in Berlin, where he got familiarized with the creative work of German expressionist artists, Kaethe Kollwitz and Adolph Menzel. Another step was Prof. Arthur Kampf’s private school where Hlushchenko got acquainted with an employee of General Consulate of the UkrSSR in Berlin, future film director Oleksandr Dovzhenko.
In 1921 the artist successfully passed the entrance exams to the Berlin Academy of Fine Art and together with his fellow countryman from Kherson region Ivan Babii started his studies at the studio of graphic arts professor Erich Wolfsfeld. His liking for Anders Zorn has had an effect on Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s portrait (1922), and the influence of masters of Italian and the Netherlands Renaissance was reflected in Woman’s Portrait and Self-Portrait of 1923.
German critics in their reviews of Hlushchenko’s portraits, which were on display at the exhibit in Berlin Kasper Gallery in May 1924 noted that “the first impression is like you find yourself in a department of old Italian painting of any museum in the time of Quattrocento,” and “his portraits both in terms of execution and artistic means brightly show that this is an outstanding talent with a great intellectual-aesthetic complex.”
The success of the artist enabled him together with Babii and European avant-garde artists Otto Dix, George Grosz, Gino Severini to take part in the nationwide German exhibit “Neue Sachlichkeit” in Manheim Museum in 1925. According to art historian V. Susak, “The fact that the works of yesterday’s graduates, not Germans, were included in this exhibit proves the recognition of their talent.”
“After miserable Berlin, which depresses with its cemetery silence, Paris is dazzling,” these words by Vladimir Mayakovsky describe the impressions of young Hlushchenko in 1925 from Mecca of European avant-garde, from impressionism to Dadaism – there were tens of various schools and stylistic streams!
It is not easy to surprise Paris. Yet Mykola Hlushchenko’s personality didn’t get lost in the spontaneous artistic crowd – his works are on display in the halls of “Autumn Salon,” “Salon of Independent,” Tuileries gallery.
In 1928 an album of Hlushchenko’s lithographs 12 Nudes with pictures of twelve nude models was published in Paris. A French critic, comparing the female images of the young Ukrainian masters with the works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, writes, “Lautrec’s women always have a taste of boulevard and cabaret. Hlushchenko’s women are simply nice friends who invite for pleasure.”
At the same time, “Parisian handsome man, bohemian, and painter” Hlushchenko (this is how he was characterized by art critic Lasovsky) was working as the chief artist at trade-industrial exhibits of the USSR abroad, decorated Soviet departments at exhibits in Lyon, Brussels, Milan, Paris, and Marcel.
At the beginning of the 1930s the artist creates a gallery of portraits of French political and literary-artistic workers of “progressive inclination,” “USSR friends,” Henri Barbusse, Romain Rolland, Paul Signac, Victor Margueritte, et al, who are distinguished due to the subtle psychological features of their images.
Hlushchenko’s solo exhibits in Rome, Stockholm, Prague, Bucharest, and Lviv were a notable phenomenon of the European artistic life. In 1933-34 the monographs about the artist’s creative work were published in Paris and in Lviv.
SELF-PORTRAIT WITH A FLOWER, 1923
Under the influence of the “Communist ideas” Hlushchenko in 1936 moved for permanent residence to Moscow. However, not everything was clear for the artist in the art of the dominating socialist realism. And annual creative business trips to Ukraine became a kind of escape; there he created poetic landscapes The Dnipro near Kaniv, Kyiv. Bank of the Dnipro, View on the Dnipro from the Volodymyr Hill.
In 1944 after the liberation of Ukraine the artist moves to Kyiv. Preferring landscape, in particular, the technique of watercolors and monotype, he creates a series of lyrical images from his homeland, March in the Dnipro (1947), Kyiv Autumn (1950), Sands get dressed with the forest (1950), Thaw (1956), Spring on the pass. The Carpathians (1957).
In mid-1960s a well-thought radical change happened in the artistic concepts of the painter: a broad energetic stroke, local flashes of pure colors, burst of energy in sound unexpected compositions, increased decorativeness of painting. That is the distinguishing feature of the landscapes, Trypillia (1967), May Blossom (1971), the landscapes Flowers in jars (1971), Flowers (1971), Blue Still Life (1971), female acts Nude (1971), Model with an album (1971), In front of the mirror (1971). For considerable achievement in Ukrainian painting Mykola Hlushchenko was honored with the title of the winner of Taras Shevchenko State Award in 1972.
At that time he noted, “My best work hasn’t been created. I’m looking for the firebird which is hard to grasp.” The artist sincerely said these words at the opening of his solo retrospective exhibit. But he died on October 31, 1977. He was buried at Baikove Cemetery in Kyiv.
