THIS WEEK’S MUSE
IVAN MARCHUK
“Give me a thousand years – I’ll paint the sky and will not repeat!”
Ivan Marchuk is a renowned artist, a patriarch of the Ukrainian avant-garde, and a legend of the Ukrainian painting. He was born in 1936 in Moskalivka, a village in Ternopil Oblast, central Ukraine. His father was a renowned and skilled weaver whose influence can be seen throughout Marchuk’s work.
He began to paint as a young child. However, due to the shortage of art materials, Marchuk improvised, making art with whatever he could find in the house and garden.
“When I was still a kid, I drew a Ukrainian flag. These long yellow peonies grew under our house. So, I rubbed the yellow color of the flowers on the paper, got some blue somewhere… and there it was, my blue and yellow flag.”
Although his parents wanted him to go into medicine or science, they supported Marchuk’s dream to become an artist. He attended art school to study painting and later ceramics. Here, he was encouraged to work outside the ideological confines of the Socialist Realism styles sanctioned by the Soviet Union.
“I have been an extremely rebellious person since I was a child. Above all else, I love freedom and liberty.”
In the late 1960s, Marchuk sold his first painting, but at this time also came under the watchful eye of the KGB. Because he depicted Ukrainian subjects and figures in his art, they suspected him of anti-Soviet behavior, and he was not allowed to join the Artists’ Union. However, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ukraine regained its independence in 1991, and he was finally allowed to exhibit his work – at the State Art Museum of Ukrainian Fine Arts, Kyiv.
He employs a painting technique of his invention. Pliontanism, from the Ukrainian word Pliontaty, meaning to weave or knit. Instead of painting with usual brush strokes, he traces and weaves extended networks of lines across the canvas. As a result, his paintings appear to be constructed from fine, closely interwoven threads. The fluidly of form across the canvas creates movement, emotion, and vitality unique to Marchuk. His style has been likened to hyperrealism and surrealism but are labels with which he disagrees.
The restrictions placed on Marchuk by the Soviet Union no longer applied in the 1990s, and he left the country, spending time in Australia, and later Canada and the US. Perhaps due to the restrictions early in his career, Marchuk rarely sells his work. He confesses that he worries about them like a father worries over his children. Despite this, about half of the 4,000 works he has created are in collections and galleries worldwide.
In 2001 he moved back to Ukraine. He paints from memory and imagination in his studio, and his subject is the country he loves. “I have to see beauty everywhere, and I want to recreate it,“ he said. “Nowhere in the world is there such a beautiful land as here.”
HAPPENING
Tuesday, May 10, from 6–8pm
South African Braii Dinner
With Joe Cizynski
Classic BBQ – South African style with complimentary Pinotage.
$60 – Member, $70 – Non-Member