Sketch for the "Ruthenian Architects" Mural Series

Vasyl Poliovyi, Yuliia Podohova

Basic information

ID: Ж-8176
Author: Vasyl Poliovyi Yuliia Podohova
Name: Sketch for the "Ruthenian Architects" Mural Series
Date of creation: 1972–1973 (?)
Country: the USSR
Culture: Ukrainian art of the Soviet period
Technique: mixed technique
Material: particleboard oil tempera
Dimensions (height x width, cm): 33 x 70

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 sketch for a monumental mural from the series "Ruthenian Architects" was created in collaboration with the artist's wife, Yuliia Podohova (version of the sketch Ж-8207). Given the context of the picture, it is probably a symbolic story about Peter the Great, the emperor and founder of St. Petersburg. He is symbolised by the figure on the left, which is emphasised in a hierarchical, intangible, but silhouette-like interpretation (characteristic proportions of the elongated body, specific cut of shoes, and hairstyle). His pose and gesture are worth noting – they reflect the author's satisfaction with his work and its manifestations. St. Petersburg is represented by symbolic fragments: the angels of the Last Judgement, as above the portal of the St. Sampson's Cathedral; a part of the facade with the colonnade of the Kazan Cathedral of the Holy Mother of God; a building that looks like the house of the Eliseev merchant dynasty; the Narva Triumphal Gate. However, the main story unfolds in the right part of the composition, where the artist shows the price of architectural masterpieces – the hard work of thousands of people whose hands built wooden houses and stone walls. The colour of the work is mixed; in the part dedicated to the builders, it is very warm and ochre, in keeping with iconographic practices, both in tonal and formal interpretation.

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

Sketch for the "Ruthenian Architects" Mural Series

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