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Sketch for the "Three Graces" Mural

Vasyl Poliovyi

Basic information

ID: Г-II-343
Author: Vasyl Poliovyi
Name: Sketch for the "Three Graces" Mural
Date of creation: 1970s (?)
Country: the USSR
Culture: Ukrainian art of the Soviet period
Technique: mixed technique
Material: cardboard pastel
Dimensions (height x width, cm): 109.5 x 83

Additionally

Type: graphic art
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 mural depicts three allegorical female figures with long, loose hair wearing antiqued clothing (tunic-like dresses with characteristic decorative folds) but barefoot. These figures stand on a disc-shaped surface of purple, ochre and carmine shades with a distinctively rounded edge. On both sides, the women are flanked by blossoming plants, resonating with phytomorphic motifs of Ukrainian decorative art. All women are depicted in full-length, with their faces turned towards the sky. The central figure, dressed in light-coloured attire with shades of yellow and ultramarine, embraces the figure on the left, wearing a yellowish-ochre tunic. The woman on the far right, dressed in red, is depicted close to these two characters but without physical contact. Additionally, her hands are raised above her head, and she is actively gesturing. The absence of facial expressions suggests that she is not so much commenting as pointing out what is happening in the sky above them. In the sky above the figures, numerous objects related to space flights and stratospheric exploration are depicted (including carrier rocket "Vostok" and likely the R–5 ballistic missile or a guided aerial bomb), as well as a series of unidentified stylised aircraft (the shapes of the two objects in the sky next to the woman on the right side resemble a bathyscaphe and a submarine). Overall, the composition is symbolically allegorical. In using attributes, it would be possible to interpret these figures as three muses (for example, Urania, Clio and Polyhymnia). However, due to the stylised nature of the images and the absence of additional symbols, they should not be definitively interpreted as muses or even as the Three Graces since a solid connection to scientific and technological progress dominates the narrative. The composition is balanced and monumental, partly reminiscent of the practice of Puvis de Chavannes or European modernists of the interwar period. The colouring is mixed and harmonious, with occasional tonal accents.

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

Sketch for the "Three Graces" Mural

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