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Sketch for the "Ruthenian Architects" Mural

Vasyl Poliovyi, Yuliia Podohova

Basic information

ID: Ж-8197
Author: Vasyl Poliovyi Yuliia Podohova
Name: Sketch for the "Ruthenian Architects" Mural
Country: the USSR
Culture: Ukrainian art of the Soviet period
Technique: mixed technique
Material: cardboard tempera
Dimensions (height x width, cm): 49.5 x 68.2

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: 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 work is a sketch for the "Ruthenian Architects" series of murals by Vasyl Poliovyi and Yuliia Podohova in the Moscow House of Architects. The composition is probably dedicated to the construction of the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat (unofficially known as the Cathedral of St. Basil, 1555–1561). On the right side is a hierarchically enlarged figure of the architect or the figure of Ivan IV Vasilievich. The figure is depicted in an outfit corresponding to the cut of men's clothes, especially caftans of the mid-16th century. Taking into account the age and social gradations of the time, the figure is relatively young, albeit with some age-related changes (severe hair loss), and of mixed ethnicity (cut of eyes, shape of nose, type of cheekbones), which also corresponds to the ethnic origin of Ivan IV, whose mother, Yelena Hlynska, was partly of Asian descent. This character is holding a plant in his right hand, probably a plumeless thistle (Latin: Carduus) or cotton thistle (Latin: Onopordum acanthium), and a model of the cathedral in his left (the image corresponds to historical descriptions before reconstruction, in particular, the miniature of the "Certified Charter Confirming the Election of Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov as Tsar of Moscow State", 1672–1673). The left side shows the construction process and depicts four characters – anonymous and highly generalised figures of builders with their backs to the viewer. The composition's colour is cold, with some warm elements, and the approach to form is monumental, given the purpose.

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

Sketch for the "Ruthenian Architects" Mural

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