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Sketch for a Mural

Vasyl Poliovyi

  • Sketch for a Mural 2
  • Sketch for a Mural 3
Basic information
ID
Ж-8203
Author
Vasyl Poliovyi
Name
Sketch for a Mural
Date of creation
1970s (?)
Country
the USSR
Culture
Ukrainian art of the Soviet period
Technique
original technique
Material
fibreboard
Dimensions (height x width, cm)
15.5 x 115
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
A sketch for a mural comprises a series of interconnected episodes from the agriculture of the time (dairy farm, modern crop production, old and new – "peasant woman with a sickle and a combine harvester", animal husbandry in a mountainous region, agriculture in the Asian part of the USSR, peasant family, harvest festival, haymaking, landscape with a cow). Like in his other sketches, Vasyl Poliovyi creates not only a working context but also a recreational one, where alongside the depiction of mechanisation and scientific transformations, there are almost elegiac scenes bordering on landscape and pastoral motifs (far right section). The images of contemporaries working in this area of the national economy are interpreted both in detail and in a generalised way (the portrayal of workers is more reminiscent of peasants from Volodymyr Maiakovskyi's ROSTA posters, famous images from paintings by Kazymyr Malevych or Henri Matisse). It is important to note that in the case of concretisation, even specific portraiture of a peasant woman with a sickle and a combine harvester next to her, with recognisable characteristics of the latter (the distinctive shape of the steering wheel), the woman is depicted with a certain humorous stylisation. Her attire alludes to pseudo-classical stylistics, and the hairstyle with a distinct parting adds a touch of comedy to the image. However, the overall balance of the composition, soft colours and harmonious narrative create a calm but not overly idealised depiction of people working in different regions, landscapes, and climatic zones.
Legal regulation
Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

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