The exhibition Picturesque Zmiyivshchina was opened on February 16th, 2012, in the Kharkiv Regional Methodology and Organization Centre of Culture and Art. Over thirty pictures by modern professional and amateur artists of Zmiyiv region are presented here.

This is the second exposition in the cycle of showcases of the works by the fine arts masters from the districts in Kharkiv region, established by the Regional Centre of Culture and Art. It is intended that the cycle will present all districts of the region where the artists live and create.

‘Unfortunately, the artists living in the districts have fewer possibilities to make exhibitions than their colleagues in Kharkiv, therefore such initiative is very useful,’ Mikhaill Sayanyy, the director of the Zmiyiv Museum of Local Lore says. ‘Slobozhanshchina is rich in beautiful landscapes granted to junction of steppe and forest-steppe zones. There are a lot of landscapes in Zmiyivshchina, especially where Severski Donets flows. Our land inspired creativity of such known artists as Sergey Vasilkovsky, who painted his well-known picture The Foot of the Cossack Mountain. Koropovo Village, and Peter Levchenko, who painted tens of pictures devoted to our land, after all he spent the last 10 years of his life in Zmiyiv, and after he died in 1917, he was buried at the local cemetery, later he was reburied in Kharkiv’.

Pictures by 9 of 12 artists, presented at the exhibition, are stored in the holdings of Zmiyiv Museum of Local Lore. 

‘Sergiy Maiboroda's works in our holdings, who unfortunately died two years ago, are exposed here,’ Mikhaill Sayanyy says. ‘And we don’t have the paintings by Fomenkova, Parkhomenko and Kostenko yet, but I hope they will appear soon’.

The painters Lidia Symonenko, Mykola Zozulia and Nelli Lytvynova are both colleagues and friends, they often go plein-air together.

‘I have an old Zhiguli, I’m at the wheel, so I pick up my friends, and we go to paint landscapes together,’ Lidia Symonenko says. ‘This is art that supports us, after all, you forget about the sores while painting, and you even forget about eating’.

Her still-life Irises and Zmiyiv landscape Winter are presented at this exhibition. Lidiya says she had no time for painting until she was retired in 2000: job, family, she had to bring up three children. But now, though feeling unwell, she has plenty of time. The only problem is that poor pension is not sufficient for materials and frames.

‘One of the main problems is that people buy paintings less,’ the painter Mykola Zozulia considers. ‘As for me, I don’t have such commercial sense to sell my paintings’.

His three pictures are presented in this exposition: Koropovo. Autumn, Severski Donets, and In Reserved Wood. Gomilsha. All of them differ sharply by colour and mood: dull autumn is in the first picture, sunny summer day is in the second, the stylised fantastic winter is in the third. Besides Zmiyiv landscapes, the painter has got a lot of works depicting Crimea, Carpathians, Kyrylivka. He has worked mainly in realistic genre through all his life, but he has tried himself in avant-garde recently and he is figuring out a work in modern style now.

‘And I am a planning engineer,’ Nelli Lytvynova says. ‘I’ve worked in the coal industry all my life, but I’ve enjoyed drawing since my childhood. My works Silent Donets, Eternal Witnesses, and October Calmness are presented at this exhibition. Warm autumn evening has inspired me to paint the last one. While drawing from nature, you enjoy the aesthetics enormously, and when the picture is ready, the inner satisfaction comes that you can show people the beauties of nature.’

Despite her retirement age, Nelli Grygorivna constantly studies and checks book novelties in arts, tries new techniques. Besides painting, she experiments with stained-glass windows of colour glass and writes poetry; she says this is another way to express her feelings, emotions which she experiences during conversing with nature.

The painter Georgiy Fomenkov tells about wonderful influence of the nature on the soul: ‘I think that the nature is the manifesting of the space on the Earth, it affects the human. After all, the sense of beauty speaks in people through the nature, and it doesn’t matter if you are a painter or an engineer. We become humane thanks to beauty and harmony between us and the nature. If people cease to see and feel the beauty, they detach themselves from the world.’

This painter can be inspired by the things which are usual at first sight. The pumpkins in his painting are drawn as if they stood proud of the picture edges.

You can admire Zmiyiv landscapes till March 10th. The exposition Picturesque Zmiyivshchina is located in the exhibit hall of the 1st floor (Pushkinskaya Street, 62).

The works of 12 artists are exhibited: Yakiv Vasylchenko, Yuriy Grabilin, Mykola Zozulia, Svitlana Koriaka, Olena Kostenko, Nelli Lytvynova, Sergiy Maiboroda, Oleg Bondiuka, Tetiana Parkhomenko, Lidiya Symonenko, Georgiy Gomenkiv, Igor Shybayev.

It should be recalled that Chuguyivskyi Vernisazh, the exhibit of paintings by 14 Chuguyiv artists, Illia Repin’s landsmen, has been the first in the showcase cycle presenting the art of districts of Kharkiv region. 

Click here for exposition in the virtual gallery