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Mural "Friendship Of Peoples" in the Palace of Culture, Rybnitsa, Moldavian SSR

Vasyl Poliovyi, Volodymyr Kokoiachuk, Yuliia Podohova

Basic information

ID: Г-I-1484
Author: Vasyl Poliovyi Volodymyr Kokoiachuk Yuliia Podohova
Name: Mural "Friendship Of Peoples" in the Palace of Culture, Rybnitsa, Moldavian SSR
Date of creation: 1972–1973
Culture: Ukrainian art of the Soviet period
Technique: original technique
Material: fibreboard mixed media
Dimensions: 56 x 160 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.

Information about author

Author: Volodymyr Kokoiachuk
Artist's lifetime: 1921–1996
Biography: Volodymyr Kokoiachuk (11.02.1921 – 01.03.1996) was a painter and monumentalist. According to his autobiography, he was born in the Starosillia village (later known as Stari Mamaivtsi) in Kitsman district, Chernivtsi region. During the Romanian occupation, the artist was unable to study. In his autobiography, Volodymyr Kokoiachuk states that he initially enrolled in an eight-year school and later attended the Vyzhnytsia Art and Industrial School. In 1950, he graduated from the Uzhhorod College of Applied Arts (enrolled in 1947). He was a graduate of the Lviv Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts, specialising in monumental and decorative painting (1956). In the protocol of the diploma work defence dated 30.06.1956, it is stated that Volodymyr Kokoiachuk worked on a frieze (mural) for the Chernivtsi Agricultural Technical School "Kolhospna Bukovyna" vestibule and the Honoured Artist of the Ukrainian SSR Yosyp Bokshai was his academic advisor (according to the recommendation by the director of the Lviv Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts dated 21.06.1956, the artist's diploma work was a decorative mosaic panel for the Veterinary Institute). Among Volodymyr Kokoiachuk's teachers were Roman Selskyi (composition, work in material), Witold Manastyrski (drawing), Mykola Berdnyk (drawing), Yurii Shcherbatenko (painting, work in material), Danylo Dovbushynskyi (composition). The artist created both the easel and monumental artworks. His painting "On a Visit" was used for the cover design of the "Dnipro" magazine (Issue 12, 1968).

Information about author

Author: Yuliia Podohova
Artist's lifetime: 1927–2021
Biography: Yuliia Podohova (1927–2021) was a monumentalist and a member of the Artists' Union of the USSR. She studied at the Stroganov Higher School in Moscow and was a student of the People's Artist of the USSR, Yekaterina Belashova. Her diploma work, stained-glass windows for an international exhibition in Brussels, was accepted as "excellent with honours". Yuliia Podohova worked on monumental murals, stained-glass windows, and mosaics. In addition, her works include easel paintings. The monumental and easel works of the artist are now kept in public spaces, museum collections, and private collections in the countries of the former USSR, including Moldova, Ukraine, and the Russian Federation. Yuliia Podohova met and later married Vasyl Poliovyi during the "Moscow period" of his work. Later, the couple moved to Lviv, where the artist created monumental works famous for her co-authored sketches for murals and mosaics (1970s). No easel works of the Lviv period have been found so far. In 1990, together with Vasyl Poliovyi, the artist moved to the United States for permanent residence, where she died in 2021 after a long illness.

Object description

The sketch for the monumental work, executed in 1978, was created with Vasyl Poliovyi, Yuliia Podohova and Volodymyr Kokoiachuk. The specific manner of execution is dominated by the stylisation and colouring characteristic of Vasyl Poliovyi (for example, it can be compared to two "Battle of Poltava" sketches from 1965). A review of both preserved and unpreserved works of Volodymyr Kokoiachuk confirms this, as his work is characterised by a realistic approach close to the Soviet propaganda art of the postwar period. The authors visualised unity among nations in a positive tone using a wedding scene enhanced by a vibrant colour scheme. On an ideological level, the work also depicts a labour scene (on the left side of the central part) and a Moldovan folk dance, "hora", accompanied by a taraf-like instrumental ensemble. The fruits in the composition's foreground (including bunches of grapes, watermelons, melons, pumpkins, sugar beets, cabbage, turnips, carrots, tomatoes, sunflowers, and aubergines) also symbolise the idea of celebrating the harvest. Representatives from different USSR republics are depicted in the central part of the composition during a feast celebrating an international wedding (based on the specifics of national costumes, particularly the headdresses of a Ukrainian woman and an Uzbek man). All the characters are shown in typical national costumes. Given the mural's location, most of the characters in flanking groups from the central part of the artwork are Moldovans. The composition is generally rendered in a warm, balanced range of colours with a predominance of red and ochre. The format and execution style contribute to the narrative nature of the mural.

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

Mural "Friendship Of Peoples" in the Palace of Culture, Rybnitsa, Moldavian SSR

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