Sketch for a Mural

The work is a sketch for an as-yet unidentified monumental composition. In its depiction of mechanised processes, this work is visually and formally related to Vasyl Poliovyi's monumental mosaic on the PJSC "Rivneazot" facade, especially the images of industrial facilities in the upper part of the work. In mixed colours, the artist has developed a stylisation of a production facility for processing raw materials and preparing finished products (probably a metallurgical plant, given the presence of characteristic blast furnaces and special pipes for oxygen supply). The generalisation approach allows only a partial reconstruction of the purpose of the enterprise. Still, in general, it reveals an image that, given the modernist formal language, symbolises for the observer the special power of the country's industry, where the personnel and management involved were the expression of the ideological glorification of the man of work. The idea of the role of the proletariat not only in professional matters but, above all, in the political process, as well as the definition of it as the engine of progress, robust industrialisation, and a practical concept of social justice, is among the key elements in the development of this image. If we take, for example, the aforementioned mosaic by Vasyl Poliovyi from "Rivneazot", the workers in it are interpreted more like Byzantine iconography in monumental works, where the point is not to glorify the workers formally but to give their images a particular dimension, as the artists of Mykhailo Boichuk's circle and Mykhailo Boichuk himself once practised, after they had attempted to integrate the figurative and stylistic features of Eastern Christian sacred art into the monumental practices of early Soviet art with the development of a new style. Given Vasyl Poliovyi's communication with Oksana Pavlenko and his attention to the artistic practices of other artists in Mykhailo Boichuk's circle, it is natural that a wide range of inspirations was evident in the process of developing this and many other works.

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery