Sketch for the "Physics" Mural

Vasyl Poliovyi

Basic information

ID: Ж-8201
Author: Vasyl Poliovyi
Name: Sketch for the "Physics" Mural
Date of creation: 1970s (?)
Country: the USSR
Culture: Ukrainian art of the Soviet period
Technique: mixed technique
Material: paper cardboard tempera
Dimensions (height x width, cm): 50.2 x 79.5

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 work is a sketch of a monumental thematic and symbolic mural on the theme of natural and social sciences in two groups of stylised portraits in red. On the right are stylised busts of Taras Shevchenko, Serhii Koroliov, Albert Einstein, Ernest Rutherford, Ihor Kurchatov, and Dmytro Likhachov. Mikhailo Lomonosov, Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, and currently unidentified figures are on the left. Below the left group are two antique busts painted in blue. They are probably busts of Democritus and Archimedes. In addition to the portraits, there are several groups of symbolic representations of the development of the natural sciences, both physics and chemistry. In particular, there are stylised models of the structure of the atom with markings of the achievements of space research and rocketry, symbolising the progressive development of scientific and technical knowledge and understanding of the universe. The overall composition is based on a mixed colour scheme with cold blues, greens, and some colour and tone accents. Although the label in the upper left corner (written on a typewriter, probably "Moscow", in a typified Cyrillic script) states that the work was intended for the assembly hall of the Institute of Mathematical Physics, such an institution did not exist at the time, so it can be assumed that it was a national research institute of a physics orientation.

Inscriptions

In the upper left corner is an inscription made on a typewriter and glued to cardboard (in russian): "Sketch of a mural of the assembly hall of the Institute of Mathematical Physics on the theme of physics / by Artist Poliovyi V. P., chairman of the artistic council Servetnyk S. M.".

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

Sketch for the "Physics" Mural

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