Best Transcarpathian Paintings On Andriyivsky Uzviz

Andriyivsky Uzviz Exhibition Center displays Masters of Transcarpathian Painting

Center staff exerted a Herculean effort, examining all known private collections in Kyiv, Lviv, and Zakarpattia, to form this display. According to Oleksandr Brei, center director, many Transcarpathian painters are now part of the stock of government-run museums across Ukraine, but most of them have become too familiar to museum audiences; the current display is truly exclusive. Artists represented on Andriyivsky uzviz this time should be regarded as classics of not so much the Ukrainian as European art school. Adalbert Erdeli, Fedir Manailo, Andriy Kotska, Yosyp Bakshtai, and Havrylo Hliuk — these are not forgotten artists of provincial Ukraine as considered during Soviet times. They are above all Europeans — sparkling, educated, and original.

The acme of Transcarpathian painting falls on the 1920s, when Zakarpattia was still part of Czechoslovakia. Masters of this school receiving education in Budapest, Munich, Rome, and Paris were completely integrated into the European cultural context.

Thus, Adalbert Erdeli, who belonged to the art school of Cezanne, was exhibited long with a number of reputed French and German painters. Later, Erdeli and Bokshai founded an art school in Uzhhorod in 1927, with a number of graduates represented in the current exhibition (e.g., Andriy Kotska, A. Kashshai, Ernest Kontratovych).

Current European styles received a sudden bright and lively folk color into the works of Transcarpathian masters. The first thing that met the eye was color and the amazing decorativeness combined with realistic portrayal. Without doubt, such works were in contrast with the creativeness of art schools which thrived on the terrain of the country of Soviets.

Beginning in 1948 dark days came for the Zakarpattia art elite. Erdeli’s followers that turned out to be “formalists” would often live on a starvation diet because they were unable to carry out state commissions. Many managed to move to neighboring Hungary and Slovakia; canvases were less lucky. Thus, unable to endure the persecution, Fedir Manailo burned a considerable part of his works. The 1950s witnessed the beginning of the underground period in the history of the Transcarpathian school, a period of mimicry in art. Yosyp Bakshtai was one of the survivors of militant socialist realism. A devout believer, he was also in a way respected by the Soviet authorities, but to his dying day he suffered beyond description, being unable to paint religious themes.

There are many stories about how artists managed to get over and above the clich О s enforced on them by Soviet ideology. There is, for example, a generally known anecdote about Fedir Manailo receiving a state commission requiring a series of paintings dedicated to the socialist labor theme. One of the canvases entitled “Factory Symphony” was painted truly from nature. The urban landscape was created as the artist viewed his television with the back panel off. No one noted the bitter irony, and the artist received a prize. After surviving World War II and the postwar purges, Manailo consulted Serhiy Paradzhanov when designing costumes and props for the feature film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors.

What makes the Kyiv exhibit so special is not only the fact that until now Zakarpattia artists were not represented in such volume and within the limits of one exposition. The collection presented for the first time highlights the creativeness of Uzhhorod artists in the diachronic aspect, from the standpoint of the political and historical situation that has developed around the school.