Born in 1929 in Sokal’ area, Andriy in the age of 15 years old, after the loss of his
parents, who were killed by NKVD, he ran away to Zakerzonia. From there
through the operation Visla he got to Gdansk, where not only he got the art
degree but also became the leading artist.
The main topic of his works was tectonic movement of nations in search of
inhabitant land. The loss and gain of homeland. Mentukh used the stylization of
iconography for the becoming of his own style. In our days, the artist is still alive
and well and I would really want him to see my portrait.
On my painting there’s the same crowd which is so often portrayed by Mentukh,
the crowd which migrates, dissapears far away, its image fades like his identity.
Parents of my father were also migrants. They were forced by communists to
leave their houses, move to the land, unknown to them and driven to the
collective farm.
Nowadays a lot of our people are migrating because of the war. The part of them
will forever be left with the feeling of the loss of homeland, the other part will
dissolve into the flow of other migrants, and the part of people like Andriy
Mentukh will never lose their Ukrainian heritage wherever they’ll go.

In their youth, these two painters studied in a town, which was a mecca for
artists in 1910s. I don’t know if they’ve ever met. But pictured them in a typical
Paris studio of that time.
Composition is the homage to the painting of Oleksandr Murashko
«Annunciation» in the real studio of Murashko in Paris.
Both artists have returned to Ukraine after education.
Sosenko was the participant in hostilities in WWI. In 1918, he returned from it
sick and in 1920 he passed away.
The fate of Murashko was even more tragic. He died in Kyiv by murderers’ – the
adepts of communistic terror.
Both of them have left a great legacy and they’re very important figures for
Ukrainian art.

The first portrait from famous artists in imaginary situations series.
Can you imagine if little Lia Berl’avska, who was born and lived in
Pereyaslav, wasn’t moved by her father to USA?
This woman got old in Pereyaslav. She’s sitting in typical interior of
old house and talks with her daughter or niece, telling her about her
unique fascination with wood carving of objects of different geometric
forms. I placed one of that works of art between her feet.
This portraits series is about situations, in which artists should appear
in right time and place so that they can realize their talent, and more
importantly, the time and place when the creation of artist won’t be
underrated. When it will be praised as art.

In 1920s Margit was studying for two years in Fernand Léger’s
workshop. In 1928 she debuted with her own exhibition in Parisian
salon. Though in 1930s she returned to Lviv. Even after the runaway
from Yaniv concentration camp, where she was put as a jew by nazis,
Margit and her husband Roman Selskyi stayed in Lviv. As an artist she
couldn’t make a career in USSR. She was not profitable for totalitarian
regime.
But what an influence her revolutionary ideas had for Lviv’s artistic
environment!
How important it is that Margit stayed over here, but not abroad.

Portrait of painter Taras Shevchenko in imaginary possible situation.
Taras Shevchenko could have made a great career of painter. He was
graduated to Peterburg’s Academy.
His guardian Angel was Varvara Repina-Volkovskaya, a writer and
daughter of the Governor General of Poltava region. Varvara was in
love with Taras.
In this portrait they’re a married couple in their mansion. In the
background is the artist’s workshop, and on the table are dishes from
a rural house during Shevchenko’s life. Taras added the notes of
familiar to him in

An artist Maria Sinjakova (1890) is an avant-gardist and neo-primitivist who created
few similar portraits “Venus’” with pastoral narrative scenes around them, modeled
on medieval icons of saints with hagiographies.
Maria was passionate about folk art. She called peasant women «Gauguins with
tattered heels». That’s why she chose the Ukrainian primitive art as her inspiration.
Her fate was tragic although still had a happy ending.
I portrayed Maria in her style.
So, first scene: Maria had a happy childhood with her four sisters and four brothers
In Krasna Polyana in Kharkiv area.
The second one: marriage and travel around the Europe and Central Asia, which
introduced Maria to avant-garde flows of art.
The third one: Sinjakova sisters with futurists and avant-gardists in Krasna Polyana,
in family estate. Bohemian clique was swimming naked. According to Maria's
stories, during such events, she drew from nature. Girls and goats and nature. Men
rarely undressed because they considered themselves not attractive enough, and
they fell in love with the Sinyakov sisters and dedicated poems to them. "Blue
Shackles" is a collection of Khlebnikov's poems specifically about the Sinyakov
sisters.
The fourth scene is based on Maria's work "War" about World War I. Such,
unfortunately, are familiar scenes of rape and murder. Maria wrote: "Undress, don't
fight." And there was half a century before the hippie movement and their "make
love, not war".
Scene five - moving to Moscow and expelling Sinyakova from the Union of Artists
"for standing in front of Western art." Maria was still engaged in book illustration for
some time, without color, and then she was forbidden to do that too, and she
painted Christmas tree toys. She lived in terrible poverty.
The last scene is her personal exhibition in Kyiv at the end of her life. Researchers of
futurist poets found Sinyakova to talk about their shared past. That's how they saw
her works, and the Kyiv art critic Dmytro Gorbachev arranged for her to be
exhibited, albeit in the Kyiv Union of Writers, and not in a solid museum. Maria had
to sell the painting to her sister in order to buy a ticket for the Moscow-Kyiv train.
But after that, worldwide fame came to Maria, and collectors from all over the
world began to come to her cell in the attic, where she lived.