Oleksandr Dubovyk, who turns 95 on 1 August, is exclusive amongst Ukrainian artists. He’s each a patriarch of Ukrainian modern artwork and, paradoxically, an rising artist.
Ukrainian historical past’s tragic twists and turns, intertwined together with his personal life, have put him in that uncommon place. Remarkably youthful, wearing black with wavy silver hair, trendy glasses and a prepared smile, he spoke by video with The Artwork Newspaper earlier this yr amongst his works displayed on the Dom Grasp Klass Cultural Centre in Kyiv.
Dubovyk was born in Kyiv when the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was making an attempt to destroy Ukraine within the Thirties and has lived via each tragedy and creative motion of Ukrainian historical past since then. His father, a poet, was executed in 1941.
Dubovyk, additionally spelled Alexander Dubovik, moved from Realist artwork within the Nineteen Sixties to summary symbols, turning into a non-conformist artist lower off from the advantages of official recognition but additionally not certain by its restrictions. His 1963 portray Nuclear Physicists, displaying scientists deep in dispute at a reactor, is Expressionist in nature regardless of its Soviet theme.
After Ukraine grew to become impartial in 1991 following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Dubovyk’s works featured on postage stamps. In a testomony to his vary, he created stained-glass home windows for the Protestant New Apostolic Church in Kyiv and wall work for Chapelle Notre Dame des Anges close to Good in France. However the chaos of that interval, which culminated in Russia’s unlawful annexation of Crimea in 2014 and invasion of japanese Ukraine, resulted in him not getting his full due when it comes to main exhibitions.
Defending Ukraine’s cultural identification
Dubovyk stayed in Ukraine via the 2022 full-scale invasion, which started when he was 90. “Our wild neighbour [Russia] needed to destroy our nation,” he says. “We didn’t submit.”
The primary large-scale retrospective of Dubovyk’s work opened on the finish of June on the Ukrainian Home exhibition corridor on Kyiv’s central Khreshchatyk Road, a venue just lately broken by a Russian strike. Labyrinths of Meanings (till 2 August) is organised by Stedley Artwork Basis, a serious collector of his work. The curator, Kateryna Tsyhykalo, has simply accomplished a second e-book concerning the artist. An exhibition of Dubovyk’s work, White Bouquet A Labyrinth of Symbolism, was additionally on present on the Oxford Competition of the Arts in July.
Oleksandr Dubovyk’s Vivat August (1991) Nationwide Artwork Museum of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine
For the reason that invasion, Dubovyk’s White Bouquet image, rooted in his shut examine of philosophy, has turn into a template for defending and rebuilding Ukrainian cultural identification on an indestructible metaphysical stage. The image has been the inspiration for the annual Bouquet Kyiv Stage competition, based in 2018, which takes place in August at St Sophia Nationwide Reserve in Kyiv.
“It has nothing to do with flowers or bouquets,” Dubovyk says. “The bouquet is a quantum thought, about artwork as an entire belonging to humanity and to not governments, nations or kinds.”
However Dubovyk, who has recorded philosophical tracts within the type of notebooks for many years, says the image is about greater than artwork. “It’s about every thing. This division on all ranges should be eradicated as a result of it’s harmful. Whether or not we wish it to or not, we’re coming to a different understanding of the world by which we’re united as humankind.”
Bouquet Kyiv Stage is sponsored by Dom Grasp Klass, the cultural organisation co-founded by Evgeni Utkin, a Ukrainian tech entrepreneur concerned in defence expertise. He describes Dubovyk’s White Bouquet as a counterpart to Kazimir Malevich’s Black Sq., an understanding of artwork “as a precursor of what occurred in society”.
From nothing we jumped into one other world from which all these drones appeared, all these new applied sciences, from common enterprise individuals who had by no means held a Kalashnikov
Oleksandr Dubovyk
“The bouquet is a mega-symbol,” Utkin says, describing it as a metaphor for Ukraine’s response to Russia’s assault. “The Russian military is ten occasions larger. It has tanks, rockets and nuclear weapons. Then there may be us, absolutely disarmed. We couldn’t have responded symmetrically. We have been armed with this bouquet. It confirmed us our power. From nothing we jumped into one other world from which all these drones appeared, all these new applied sciences, from common enterprise individuals who had by no means held a Kalashnikov.”
A apply fashioned by conflict
Yuliya Bukus, a mission coordinator at Dom Grasp Klass, describes how Dubovyk created his sequence The Phantoms in the beginning of the 2022 invasion. “Within the first days, it was almost inconceivable for him to succeed in his studio within the Obolon district of Kyiv as a result of menace of occupation, so he started working at residence. This example formed each the format and method: he used colored paper, markers and gouache,” she says. “The creation of those works was continuously accompanied by the sounds of sirens and explosions, fierce battles and a profound sense of anticipation. To this point, he has created round 100 works and continues to develop the sequence as we dwell via these turbulent occasions.”
Dubovyk spoke to The Artwork Newspaper in entrance of his 2015 portray The Encounter with Nothingness, depicting an summary determine’s encounter with a spewing orb. “That is probably the most fascinating thriller,” he says. “ when somebody is exterior the door and also you don’t know if it’s ominous. In artwork you all the time have this: somebody is all the time behind the door.”
He provides: “Human life is hope, it’s fixed expectation of the unknown. That is the primary thriller of life. How do you exist on this situation when somebody is lurking behind your again. Life is given to you. You perceive it’s the solely factor of worth.”
