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Old Forest

Karlo Zvirynskyi

Basic information

ID: Ж-4150
Author: Karlo Zvirynskyi
Name: Old Forest
Culture: Contemporary times
Technique: oil painting
Material: cardboard oil
Dimensions (height x width, cm): 72 x 57

Additionally

Type: painting
Genre: landscape
Plot: Landscape
Provenance: Gifted by Karlo Zvirynskyi, 1967

Information about author

Author: Karlo Zvirynskyi
Artist's lifetime: 1923–1997
Country: Poland, the Ukrainian SSR
Biography: Karlo Zvirynskyi was born on 14 August 1923 in the village of Lavriv in the Lviv region. In 1942–1943, he studied at the Lviv State Art and Industrial School at the Department of Graphic Arts under Mykola Butovych and Volodymyr Balyas. From September 1943, he continued his studies at the Department of Painting (in the studio of Mykhailo Kozyk) in the newly created art educational institution "Higher Fine Arts Studios" (Hoheren Kunstmalerfachstudien). In September 1945, he entered the fifth year of the Department of Painting at the Lviv School of Applied Arts (now the Ivan Trush Lviv State College of Decorative and Applied Arts), where he studied under Roman Selskyi. In 1947–1953, he continued his studies under R. Selskyi at the Lviv Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts (now the Lviv National Academy of Arts), Department of Monumental Painting (with a one-year break in 1949–1950, when he was expelled for "bourgeois nationalism and the spread of formalist tendencies in art"). It was under the influence of his teacher that K. Zvirynskyi became interested in the experience of Cubism, Abstractionism, Dadaism, Fauvism, and Surrealism, based on which he later formed his distinctive painting style. In 1953–1959, K. Zvirynskyi taught painting and composition at the Ivan Trush Lviv State College of Decorative and Applied Arts. In 1959–1982, he continued his teaching activity at the Lviv State Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts. In 1982, for refusing to cooperate with the Committee for State Security (KGB/KDB), he was not allowed to run for re-election to his position. In 1990, he resumed his teaching career as a professor of the Department of Monumental Painting at the Lviv Academy of Arts. In the 1950s–1980s, in K. Zvirynskyi's apartment, there was an "underground" art school for creative youth, the purpose of which, in addition to artistic studies, was to study world and Ukrainian culture and form national consciousness. Informal professional communication contributed to the creative formation of several well-known Lviv artists: A. Bokotei, I. Marchuk, O. Minko, P. Markovych, R. Petruk, B. Soika, and Z. Flinta. This prompted K. Zvirynskyi to be recognised as the "father of the modern Lviv school of painting" (Y. Boiko). The influence of Post-Impressionism marks Zvirynskyi's early works. In the early 1950s, the artist began experimenting with the "pure shape" and persistently sought purely formal, colouristic and compositional solutions to creative tasks. Since 1957, he used paper, wood, tin, fabric, ropes, and plaster to create relief compositions. He created exquisitely restrained gradations of black, grey and ochre colours. The peculiarity of the artist's works of the late 1950s is visual and musical synesthesia and understanding of visible forms as representations of transcendental spiritual reality, the will of the Creator. In 1960, a new stage began in K. Zvirynskyi's work, marked by the transition to "textureless" painting and combinations of black, white, red, green, and ochre colours, full of mystical sounds. At the same time, K. Zvirynskyi's art gradually developed a new figurative and plastic concept – "abstract surrealism". In the conditional irrational space of the canvases, the artist placed various abstract forms, fantasy objects, and signs, which, like living beings, created a mysterious world involved in the Absolute and the will of the Creator. In the works of the last decade, K. Zvirynskyi returned to a more active colour scheme and actualised and creatively rethought the concepts of his early works. The master's oeuvre includes sacred artistic works based on the traditions of ancient Ukrainian iconography in combination with high colouristic culture and plastic sense.

Object description

The "Old Forest" composition exemplifies K. Zvirynskyi's appeal to the experience of Post-Impressionism and the actualisation of its plastic and semantic principles. Thus, the Post-Impressionist inspiration of the work is confirmed by the developed symbolic programme, reflecting the fundamental meanings of life in a fragment of nature. The artist's intention to embody the echoes of the Absolute led to the pantheistic nature of the image, the feeling of the presence of the Creator's will in the forest thickets. At the same time, the image reminds us of the ancient Aristotelian concept of "hyle", which associated the forest with matter and signified the original unity of existence. The mysteriousness and secrecy of the forest fragment refer to folklore ideas about the forest as a remote, untamed space, the opposite of home in the archaic opposition "someone else's – one's own". The tension of the landscape is created by the understanding of the forest as a dangerous liminal (transitional) locus associated with obstacles, their overcoming, search, and path. In its existential projection, the work is reminiscent of the lines of Dante's Divine Comedy: "At the midpoint on the journey of life, I found myself in a dark forest, for the clear path was lost". The artistic solution of the landscape is based on the conceptual rejection of three-dimensionality and linear perspective, plastic generalisation and flattening of forms. A restrained colour scheme and a subtle gradation of grey-blue and ochre-brown tones serve as a means of figurative expression. The work is united with the experience of Post-Impressionism by the intrinsic value of the colour surface and the picture plane accentuated by dense impasto painting.

Inscriptions

On the back, at the top right, is the inscription: "Karlo Zvirynskyi".

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

Old Forest

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