December 22, 2016 at 16:00, the Branch of the HFC will host the opening of the photographic exhibition “After the works of A.I. Kuindzhi (15.01.1842 – 11.07.1910)”. Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi was a famous Ukrainian painter and mentor of the Greek origin. In his optimistic works, he celebrated Ukrainian nature and revealed its poetry and beauty. He was an artist of light. Since 1892, he held a title of professor of the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, and in 1893, he became a full member of the Academy.
The exhibition is produced by artists from two associations of photographers from Mariupol named “Bereg” and “Matritsa-M” directed by Yuriy Filin. They dedicated their joint project to the 175th anniversary of Arkhip Kuindzhi and prepared artistic works that represent “photographic analogues to works by the great painter”, say the authors. The project has received recognition and support from the Federation of Greek Societies of Ukraine.
The main challenge faced by the authors of the exhibition was find subjects that would correlate with the works by Kuindzhi in the best possible way. This took a lot of preparatory work during which artists studied the biography of their celebrated compatriot and consulted professional painters. In search of the nature scenes, they visited many regions of Ukraine and the Caucasus (unfortunately, there was no possibility to visit Crimea).
The entire process of preparation of the project from the original idea to the printing took one year. In a result, the panel of experts selected 60 photographs by 16 authors believed to show the closest analogues to the paintings by Kuindzhi.
The authors did not try to repeat the paintings in full detail, for in many respects a landscape painting is an artist’s personal reflection, “his will and ability to covey, with the aid of color and a brush, his own sentiment inspired by the once observed things”
“I found my “Lonely pine tree”, says Angela Beloded, one of the leading project supervisors, “in the Chernigov Region. It was a somewhat sad story, for this was the only tree surviving after a felling. A year ago there grew a forest… If one takes a close look, he will find that my pine tree looks different from that of Kuindzhi. It was growing in a forest and did not become sturdy like it would be the case with a detached tree, but to me the general sentiment is the same – the loneliness of a pine tree and the feeling of being lost on the fringe of a felled forest”.
The exhibition has been already presented in Mariupol, Kharkiv and Kyiv.
From December 22, 2016 till January 31, 2017 it will be open for residents of and visitors to Odessa.
Admission is free of charge.
P.S. The exhibition is also a part of the Open Project “Unknown Kostandi”. Ilya Repin related that “The period of his [Kostandi’s] academic training appears before me in the faces of the most noble and talented young men, with whom Kostandi made friends… A.I. Kuindzhi adored Kostandi. It was interesting to observe the two Greeks infiltrating the exceptional depths of truths of every kind. Each time, like before the most important chess move, Kuindzhi, lifted high his handsome eyebrows… and secretly devoured his young friend by a surprising glance, while Kostandi, in the modest pose, in a very low voice frequently surprised his compatriot-friend-mentor by the absolutely unheard truths of his original thinking…”
