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Sketch for a Mural

Vasyl Poliovyi

Basic information

ID: Ж-8196
Author: Vasyl Poliovyi
Name: Sketch for a Mural
Date of creation: 1970s (?)
Culture: Ukrainian art of the Soviet period
Technique: original technique
Material: fibreboard mixed media
Dimensions: 14.5 x 100 cm (height x width)

Additionally

Type: painting
Genre: symbolic art
Plot: Allegory
Provenance: Handed over to the museum from Vasyl Poliovyi

Information about author

Author: Vasyl Poliovyi
Artist's lifetime: b.1936
Country: the USSR, the USA
Biography: Vasyl Poliovyi is a Ukrainian painter and graphic artist, one of the leading authors of Soviet Nonconformist art. He was born on April 22, 1936, in Kryvyi Rih city. The artist's father, Petro Poliovyi, worked as an engineer, and his mother, Oleksandra, was a mathematics teacher. With the start of hostilities on the territory of the USSR on June 22, 1941, the family was evacuated to the Sverdlovsk region (RSFSR). There Vasyl Poliovyi studied in school, and after completing his education in 1954, he entered an art school in Yelets. However, the artist later transferred to the Tavricheskaya Art School (Leningrad, RSFSR) and then to the Higher School of Industrial Art named after Vera Mukhina. After completing his studies, he moved to Moscow, where he worked at an art collective with his wife, artist Yuliia Podohova. He focused mainly on the monumental and decorative design of the interiors and the exteriors of public buildings and governmental institutions. At the same time, he was involved in the circle of nonconformist artists in Moscow and Leningrad, including Dmytro Krasnopevtsev, Anatolii Zverev, Mykhailo Shemiakin, Oleh Tselkov, Eduard Steinberg, Volodymyr Sterlihov, and the Lianozovo Group, as well as writers like Serhii Dovlatov, Yurii Mamleev, and Vladlen Gavrilchik. He participated in unofficial exhibitions, including those in the Federal Republic of Germany, France, Italy, and Czechoslovakia. In 1965, while visiting his brother, the researcher and inventor Renat Poliovyi, the artist created a large cycle of thematic works about Ukraine. Some of them were exhibited in Moscow. Later he joined the Artists' Union of the USSR. In 1972, Vasyl Poliovyi moved to Lviv, where he worked on monumental and easel paintings. During this period, he interacted with the local art community, including Valerii Shalenko, Mykhailo Steinberg, Yurii Sokolov, Okhrim Kravchenko, Margit and Roman Selsky, Anatolii Semahin, art critics Hryhorii Ostrovskyi and Dmytro Shelest, and writer Ihor Klekh. In 1976, Vasyl Poliovyi was expelled from the Artists' Union, which made his professional activity practically impossible. As a result, the artist decided to emigrate from the Soviet Union to the United States, where he still lives and works in Greenville, South Carolina.

Object description

The sketch is likely part of a series of murals for a recreational complex. As in most of Vasyl Poliovyi's works, a series of thematically and visually related motifs are placed on a generalised and stylised background, seamlessly transitioning from one to another. The approach to decorative interpretation prevails here, resulting in most biomorphic forms being more elusive than recognisable (as was the case, for example, in Yevhenii Ablin's mosaics on Zelenograd's Yunost Square in 1969–1970). However, the fish in the lower left corner and the highly stylised ammonite (or nautilus) in the right part of the composition direct the viewer's imagination to perceive the entire space of images as the bottom of the sea, where one can see unimaginable shapes and creatures. Recognising specific features is not as crucial here. Whether they are sea anemones, gorgonians or some marine invertebrates unknown to science, the artist's goal is to create a unique environment where the extraordinary becomes real. The choice of colours, the harmonisation of tones and the horizontal structure of the composition as a contemplative environment align with the functional purpose of the building. The character of the artist's visual language corresponds to the trends of Soviet monumental and decorative art of the early 1970s.

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

Sketch for a Mural

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