2024-04-16
It is not only the civilian population that suffers in war, culture also suffers: museum workers evacuate collections, conservators protect churches from bombing. In these difficult times, it is worth reminding (also through art) that Ukraine is a beautiful country with wonderful monuments. In this list, we have decided to describe three paintings which show its beauty.
The representation of a night scene in painting is called a nocturne. In the nocturne by Stanisław Witkiewicz from 1895, the viewer can see a peaceful summer night in the countryside. The painting is maintained in warm colours, in the foreground you can see a flowery field, in the background the painter depicted a fragment of a calm river and several country cottages. The whole representation gives the impression of peace and quiet. A fascinating painterly trick is the depiction of St. John's worms in the composition, diagonal lines on the entire surface of the painting.
One of the aims of Impressionism was the depiction of fleeting impressions, including sensitivity to changing weather. Impressionists went outdoors, depicted landscapes at different times of the day. A great representative of this trend in Polish painting was Jan Stanisławski. In the composition "Beehives in Ukraine" we can see a beautiful summer day and apiaries with beehives. The main character of the painting is the light, which shimmers on the meadow, bushes and beehives. Various dots and flecks of colour appearing next to each other create an impression of vibration.
There are many wonderful architectural monuments in Ukraine. One of them is definitely the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kiev, now on the UNESCO list. In this 1903 painting, the church is shown in the warm sunlight of late afternoon. The golden domes of the temple are highlighted with green, blue and orange spots of colour. This composition is one of the impressions from Stanisławski's trip to Kiev, in the years 1898-1903 his mother, Karolina Stanisławska, née Olszewska, lived there.