An inside explosion

Kvartyra, a Dnipropetrovsk art center that hosted Oleh Holosii’s exhibit “Above the Icebergs,” is located near the school where the prominent sculptor Vadym Sidur studied.

On the way to Holosii’s exhibit one passes by a recently erected memorial plaque to Sidur, a second reminder of those great artists, who brought fame to their historical homeland and have been totally forgotten there.

Only five personal expositions of Holosii’s works have been held since his rise to prominence (after the sensational all-union exhibit of modern art at the Moscow Manege in 1988). Three of them took place in Ukraine (the most recent one was eight years ago, at the National Museum of Visual Arts in Kyiv). No exhibit has ever taken place in Dnipropetrovsk, where Oleh was born and graduated from art school.

Kvartyra exhibits 16 canvases. Several of them were found at the art school, and the most important paintings were provided by the artist’s mother Maia Havrylivna. The accent is made namely on these five works, which characterize Holosii’s creative work as a mature artist: Fantasy, Mom, Self-Portrait, Sleeping in Gethsemane, and Above the Icebergs.

The combination of student and adult works exposes the prodigious leap, an inner explosion, which turned the promising artist into the most outstanding Ukrainian painter in the recent decades.

There are two self-portraits for comparison. The first one, dated 1982-84, has a broad impressionist stroke and places a realistic accent on the character. In the second, newer one the details are generalized to make the image look more integral, the sitting figure possesses an inner tension and terracotta graphical expressiveness, the face is covered with hair and hand, so that only one eye is seen looking at the viewer with question and despair. This is destiny rather than character.

On the whole, the earlier portraits, which account for the bigger part of the exhibit, are executed with technical accuracy and the quality of a diligent pupil’s work; there is also inspired work, the freedom of strokes, mixed with uncertainty and anarchism.

In the late 1980s Holosii begins to work differently with color, as well as the space and the place of the character in it. The works acquire hieroglyphic forms and acute meanings. The half-childish sunny coziness of the etude In the Studio is substituted by the metaphysical scope of Fantasy: the situation drastically changes, as the hero is not mastering the space with the help of a brush, he simply stops at the edge of the universe, charmed with the unearthly burst of blue and white.

In many Holosii’s pictures of the later period man faces something he cannot understand, a question that is unbearably simple, and which only a genuinely great artist can ask himself – and the viewer.

The drama of staying in this world, mysterious and unexplored, is easily read in the restrained inner shining of the portrait Mom and the closed spirals of the sleeping apostles who are trying to hide in the blue-and-green twilight of Gethsemane, but from the lower part of the canvas a crimson strip of morning, marked with a black dot of the betrayal, already committed, is inevitably approaching them in the phantasmagoria of the flight of a balloon in the shining of a full moon over icebergs. Among other things, Holosii was obsessed with the motives of game and flight – he cherishes the weightlessness of being in his works. In his latest works, which are his best, he gradually loses touch with the earth, his own or imposed boundaries, as if breaking his own limits and the gravitation of the art surrounding him.

So, there have been more representative expositions, which took place in larger premises and were followed with more promotion. But the new exhibit with its cozy atmosphere, now seems by far the most important one – because it is taking place in Dnipropetrovsk, and because of its own, though torn rhythm, which resembles the sound of steps, with the last ones reaching us from above the emptiness.

The Day has interviewed the person who knew Holosii best, his teacher Leonid ANTONIUK.

Mr. Antoniuk, when did you meet Oleh?

“I always get exited when I am speaking about my graduates. We met in the Dnipropetrovsk School of Arts in 1981. Thirteen people came then, and I taught them for three years. Then he entered the National Academy in Kyiv, the Institute of Arts at the time. I was young too, 30 years old, I was a beginning pedagogue, three years out of the pedagogic institute. The students of that year were very strong. They practically taught me.”

What were you teaching them?

“Professional skills, though I was not quite masterful at the time either. We started traditionally from the fundamentals of academic education, learning form, color, composition etc. And as four-year students, they were skillful enough.”

What was Oleh like as a student?

“On the one hand he was a usual student, and on the other hand he stood out. In terms of work he was obsessed, troubled, discontent, he was always exploring. Of course, there was academic work, but the main thing took place after classes, after formal study. He painted much for himself in the studio; he improved himself, implementing his own elements of creative work, his own vision: it was not just passive painting from life; I could feel an extraordinary personality growing. And he always asked me a hundred of questions, driving me into a corner, as I could not answer many of them, because I was still green, and he liked it. When he got confused, he came to me, and we sat down and analyzed everything. And then he reached a higher level, and left for Kyiv.”

Were you much older than he?

“I was 15 years older, but we were like colleagues, he did not allow chummy manners. You know there are talented but lazy people, they will do an academic task and stop there, whereas Oleh was talented and hardworking too, which is quite a rare thing. He was never satisfied. Maybe he felt that he had little time. Of course, now I’m assuming this from retrospective, but for some reason he was always in a hurry. The same thing happened with the academy: he left his studies. It was hard for him to work within academic framework, he was suffocating. He had regular conflicts because he was working in non-academic manner, and the Soviet professors gave low marks for his works.”

Why?

“Because he was moving towards creativity, which was totally unwelcome at the time, because if you didn’t stop this trend, it would spread and it would be difficult to take control over it. The studying terms were too long for him: he wanted to create. Then came the perestroika, and in 1988 the famous exhibit took place at the Moscow Manege. They shocked the whole of Moscow. Before then Ukrainian art had not been taken seriously, and he made such a breakthrough. Of course, as a young person he liked when people noticed him, and then the recognition came. After that the framework of the academic studies seemed even smaller for him, so he entered the Union of Artists and left the institute. I was afraid of that.”

Why?

“I grew up in such a time and order that I thought he had to finish an institute, like everyone. However, history shows us many examples when talented painters left the academies. In my time I thought that he would become a recognized traditional artist. Then everything was ruined. I was not ready for that, I was even shocked, but I understood that he left the field of my control and went further. Suddenly he refused to paint. It seems to me he wrote in a catalogue: ‘It is boring to take up painting nowadays.’ I was suffering – painting is such a strong point, a rare one, and he rejected it. Maybe that was a temporary decision, but you see how life made its own arrangements.”

In your opinion, what is his contribution in the artistic language?

“Time will tell. By his nature he was a great colorist, a great painter, subtle, rare. I think the main thing is that he brought a different vision and sensation. This is a mastery.”

In my opinion, nobody equal to him by talent has appeared in that new wave since the “Parisian Commune” (a union of artists) of the late 1980s.

“There was a great contrast between what those guys were doing and the older generation. The group was big, but he was indeed special. Now, when there is freedom, the contrast has suddenly disappeared. There are allusions, some people try to copy Holosii, making use of another person’s blood. And in those times they were sincere. Now the main thing is to acquire one-day popularity. In those times they were doing so without specific reasons, without prospects, for their souls, and now people are doing this for money or just to show off. So, the works of today’s artists turn out to be skin-deep, they lack background, they have not been created through suffering.”

What is the importance of the exhibit?

“I’m very glad that it has taken place. His oeuvre is vast, the exhibit presents only a small part which does not define him as an artist, but there is the beginning, the elements, and there are also symbolical pictures, which clearly show the changes that were taking in him. However, Dnipropetrovsk is poor in this sense. Oleh is a grand personality for the whole of Ukraine, but we don’t have anything in the city apart from the works his mother preserved and several works in the school. Even the Dnipropetrovsk Museum does not have anything, all this taking into consideration that he is known to everybody. This exhibit is important as memory, as a reminder to the city, and I’m very glad that it has taken place. I think Oleh is gratified in some other place.”

We also asked the artist’s mother Maia Havrylivna to say a few words:

“It was hard for me to give these works for the exhibit because I appreciate them very much. I don’t need money; the pictures are dear to me. There are few of them left, and they are very dear to me as memory.

“I can still feel the connection with Oleh. He is always nearby. He is still here. He loved his exhibits. He loved his teachers very much, especially Leonid Opanasovych, he loved him more than his father, I’m not afraid to say this. Father was at work all the time, he was busy. And Leonid Opanasovych was always near. It was owing to him that Oleh became an artist.

“For the most part he painted in Leonid’s studio. I came there and he painted my portraits. When he asked, I sat for my portrait, but I immediately started yawning, I felt sleepy, so he said, ‘Okay, you may sleep, I will paint you as you sleep.’ In fact many portraits have been left, I’m young and pretty there, I will ask Leonid to look for them in the school.

“There were many wonderful people in Oleh’s surrounding, but there were also people who envied him. Both at school, and at the institute he was nicknamed Mr. Charming. He indeed had such qualities. He composed songs, played the guitar. He was always nice and tender with me. When he suddenly closed his eyes, I went away, because I knew that he was thinking about something of personal.

“He did not get married, but he was going to: there was a girl he loved. When I asked him to marry, he replied: ‘Mom, I won’t have time to do what I intend.’”

The Day’s FACT FILE

Oleh Holosii (1965, Dnipropetrovsk – 1993, Kyiv). Died tragically.

EDUCATION

1984-90 – the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Architecture (department of monumental painting), Kyiv; 1980-84; School of Arts, Dnipropetrovsk

PRIVATE EXHIBITS

2003 – the National Museum of Arts of Ukraine, Kyiv; 1998 – Phantasmagorias, the Atelier Karas Gallery, Kyiv; 1994 – Days and Nights Interchange, Ridzhina Gallery, Moscow; 1993 – UKV Gallery, Kyiv; 1991 – Ridzhina Gallery, Central House of Artist, Moscow

GROUP EXHIBITS

2002 – Painting Firsthand, Moscow Manege; 2001 – Art against Geography, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg; 1999 – Views concerning Ukraine, Passage du Retz, Paris; 1994 – Artistic Impressions, Ukrainian Home, Kyiv; Space of Cultural Revolution, Ukrainian Home, Kyiv; 1993 – Steppes of Europe, Modern Art Center “Zamek Ujazdowski,” Warsaw; Angels above Ukraine, Edinburg; Art-Myth III, Manege, Moscow; 1992 – Dialog with Kyiv, Villa Stuck, Munich; Post-Anesthesia, Ladengalerie Lothringerstrasse, Munich, Grassi Museum, Leipzig; 1991 – Artists of the “Parisian Commune,” the Exhibit Hall of the Union of Artists of Ukraine, Kyiv; Art-Myth II, Moscow Manege; Spring Exhibit, Central House of Artists, Kyiv; 1990 – Babylon, Palace of Youth, Moscow; New Figurations, Literary Museum, Odesa; New Ukrainian Painting, Budapest; Three Generations of Ukrainian Art, Ukraine’s Chamber of Commerce, Kyiv; the Ukrainian Painting Art of the 20th century, the National Museum of Arts of Ukraine, Kyiv; A Flash, the House of Architecture, Kyiv; Art-Myth I, Moscow Manege; 1989 – Between Post-Modernism and Avant-Garde, Warsaw; the Republican Youth Exhibit, the Central Museum of Artists, Kyiv; Sedniv’89, the National Museum of Arts of Ukraine, Kyiv; the First Collection, Gallery Mars, Moscow; 1988 – Dialog through Centuries, Polytechnic Institute, Kyiv; Love-88, the Museum of Kyiv’s History; Kyiv – Kaunas, the Exhibit Hall of the Union of Artists of Ukraine, Kyiv; All-Union Exhibit of Young Artists, Moscow Manege.