Harlequin’s treasures

Kazimir Malevich, Vasyl Yermylov, Viktor Palmov, Alla Horska, Vasyl Tsaholov, and even Salvador Dali… Works by these authors are exhibited in the project “Harlequin is Leaving... In Memoriam.” There are over 400 artworks in the exposition, and it is only a part of Ihor Dychenko’s collection. An artist, art historian, poet, and legendary collector, Ihor Dychenko used to save from oblivion works by the banned Ukrainian artists. Dychenko died on May 24, 2015, and Mystetsky Arsenal has staged in his memory a major exhibition and prepared a catalogue of artworks from his collection.

LIFE IS THEATER

Harlequin looks from the pictures both here and there. The exposition displays about ten works with this hero – for example, Vasyl Yermylov’s Harlequin, one the exhibit’s central items. There are also sketches of Harlequin’s costume, including one by Alexandre Benois, and a few works with Harlequin by Mykhailo Sokolov.

Nobody knows how a series of Salvador Dali’s graphics, now displayed at Mystetsky Arsenal, found itself at Dychenko’s disposal. They are illustrations to Ovid’s Art of Love. “It is a print signed by the author,” says Ihor Oksametny, one of the exhibit’s curators. “Dychenko promised to tell us later how he had obtained these works. He said it was too early to do so. We know that he brought these works from Europe, but we don’t know from what country. He mentioned in one interview only that customs officers asked him what he was carrying. He answered: ‘Dali.’ They let him go through. They either didn’t know who Dali was or did not believe him.”

Harlequin is a cunning and inventive servant from the Italian commedia dell’arte. In the 1990s, Dychenko staged exhibits of works from his collection to mark St. Nicholas’ Day and his birthday at the same time. Harlequin often featured in the names of those events. In general, theater occupied an important place in the collection and life of Dychenko. Firstly, his collection includes many sketches of costumes and scenery by such masters as Anatol Petrytsky, Oleksandr Khvostenko-Khvostov, and Vadym Meller. Dychenko also wrote serious materials on ballet. After all, the Mystetsky Arsenal exhibit displays some of the collector’s own works – carnival-nature collage pictures.

“Ihor Dychenko was a different-type, unconventional person,” Olha Melnyk, a curator of the exhibit “Harlequin is Leaving,” recalls. “He must have suffered from being different from others and thus often indulged in mystifications. I can’t say which of his stories about collected pictures are true and which are invented. Harlequin was very close to him. Harlequin is the quintessence of his life – he looks cunning, but this hides some kind of pain.”

WHERE ARE MASTERPIECES FOUND?

Ihor Dychenko had been collecting pictures since the 1960s. The collector said in the new millennium that from now on he could not afford financially any of his collected artworks. Art critic Dmytro Gorbachev, who knew Dychenko very well, described the way he used to find his masterpieces: “Ihor had taste and knew what big art was. Once he came to Yermylov’s widow and said he was interested in her husband’s oeuvre. The widow was pleased that young people showed interest in a ‘well-battered’ artist. And when Ihor offered to buy something, she was happy indeed!” Dychenko bought a suprematist composition by Kazimir Malevich at a relatively low price because he thought it had been done by the famous artist’s pupil. But he came to the conclusion in a year’s time that the picture’s author was Malevich himself. The artist’s appraisers also agreed to this opinion.

The collector risked very much, collecting the works of “non-Soviet” artists. According to Gorbachev, ill-wishers at the Artists League hoped that the KGB would “deal with” Dychenko. What saved him was perhaps international recognition that came to him in the 1980s. Foreign intellectuals used to visit the collector, and works from his collection were soon exhibited in Paris, Tokyo, New York, and other world capitals.

THE COLLECTION’S DESTINY

Ihor Dychenko’s collection was kept in various museums of Kyiv. In 2011 the collector began cooperating with Mystetsky Arsenal, and 517 artworks from his collection moved there temporarily in a few years’ time. It is now Dychenko’s widow, the only heir of his, who is to decide on the destiny of his collection. “Ihor Dychenko and we were friends. He liked and valued Mystetsky Arsenal. We are eager to keep this collection from being scattered,” says Natalia Zabolotna, Director General of Mystetsky Arsenal.

Dychenko himself dreamed of a museum-cum-theater, where people could see his collection, where a white grand piano would be playing, where everybody would feel easy and joyful. A white grand piano has been put in one of the halls of the exhibit “Harlequin is Leaving,” and a program with concerts, film and stage shows has been prepared. “We have not invented any special concepts of the exhibit. We tried to do it the way Dychenko would have perhaps done,” Oksametny says.

The exhibit “Harlequin is Leaving... In Memoriam” will remain open at the National Art and Culture Museum Complex “Mystetsky Arsenal” in Kyiv until September 6.