Dovzhenko localities
An exhibition of the famous artist Heorhii Babiichuk’s watercolors and pastels has began at the Museum of Hetmanship
This exhibition is dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the famous Ukrainian painter, graphic artist and master of folk applied arts. Babiichuk is of an old Cossack stock. He was born in Kyiv and has been used to the Dnipro River, the city’s hills and blooming chestnuts since his childhood.
He received his artistic education in Kyiv and Riga. The artist says that “one learns from one’s masters and teachers, not from the walls of a school.” He remembers warmly his first teacher Abram Balazovsky at the latter’s studio in Kyiv’s Podil, Yulii Yatchenko from the Shevchenko Republican School of Art, and Aleksandr Junkers at the Riga Academy. Babiichuk has participated in Republican Art Exhibitions since 1966 when he, then a young painter, was selected for the first time by Tetiana Yablonska herself. At the time, he idolized the world renowned Ukrainian painters Mykola Hlushchenko and Serhii Shyshko as well as the famous film director, writer and artist Oleksandr Dovzhenko who had studied with Babiichuk’s grandfather Dmytro in Dresden.
“The subjects of my paintings are simple: the spacious sky, a forest on the horizon, a strip of land, water in the foreground. However, when portraying them, I always try to show my best as an artist.” “I seek to teach the love of the country to people through my own perceptions and visions of different parts of Ukraine from the Dnipro to the Carpathians. I look for my philosophy and often find it in the sky. Therefore, I paint it so much.” Such is the poetry of painting.
The artist always includes the Desna River, with its grassy, willow-covered and sandy beaches, into his paintings. More generally, sky and water are the two symbolic natures of the painter. His mind and soul have yearned for them from a young age.
Besides his achievements in the related arts of architecture, sculpture, and graphics, Babiichuk loves and appreciates the poetic word. He writes poetry, keeps a diary, works as journalist. Inspired by the public and political activities of Winston Churchill who was also a talented painter, Babiichuk published several essays on this outstanding man. He and his friend, the famous Ukrainian poet Mykola Synhaiivsky long strived to get their joint album book Poetry of Colors and Words published and saw it done in 2008. In the book, colorful paintings by Babiichuk are interwoven with poems and reflections by both artists.
The works of the artist can be seen at the Vatican Pontifical College, private collections and galleries in Italy, Poland, Germany, Spain, the US, England, Scotland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Venezuela, Serbia, and Israel.
The exhibition at the Museum of Hetmanship will be on display through September 8, 2012.
