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Sketch for the "Wealth of Cold Siberia to the Motherland!" Mural

Vasyl Poliovyi

Basic information

ID: Ж-8180_1_2
Author: Vasyl Poliovyi
Name: Sketch for the "Wealth of Cold Siberia to the Motherland!" Mural
Date of creation: 1970s (?)
Country: the USSR
Culture: Ukrainian art of the Soviet period
Technique: mixed technique
Material: paper cardboard tempera
Dimensions: 43.5 x 30 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 part of a series based on the culture and life of the peoples of the Far North of the USSR. The upper part is a space bounded by a triangle of yaranga in which a hunter with a rifle stands on snowshoes, holding a fur animal carcass in his outstretched hand. To the hunter's left, a reindeer grazes on lichen, and to the right is probably a dwarf birch. The scene is set against an intense aurora borealis. It is worth noting that there are two versions of the central part (11.7 х 28 cm): the first shows two geologists working in the north (possibly Siberia) with a theodolite and a levelling rod in the centre, while a professional non-native fisherman stands beside them on the left, holding a large fish, probably a sturgeon (Latin: Acipenser). The second version, which was pasted over the first, contains other figures: on the left is a hunter-trader with the skin of a furry animal (probably something like an arctic fox), in the centre are two geologists who were working on oil exploration in the previous sketch, and here they are holding symbolic models of oil production towers. On the right, a professional fisherman is kneeling with a sturgeon. At the bottom is a red and yellow sun in the folk art style. It is flanked on either side by stylised oil towers of the period in the Far North. The colours of the work are mixed and rich, contributing to the overall impression of festivity and uniqueness of the event. The tonal and chromatic accents are harmonious without excessive variety, and the style is reminiscent of iconographic and modernist practices.

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

Sketch for the "Wealth of Cold Siberia to the Motherland!" Mural

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