For chasers after enlightenment and beauty in a world often dark and heartbreaking, art offers so much – art opens a space for dialogue, solace, challenge, hope, and higher ideals. I’ve been learning more about Ukrainian artists this week, and I thought it would be good to share a few finds.
Petro Levchenko (1856 – 1917) studied in Saint Petersburg as well as in Paris and Rome during the ascendency of Impressionism. (See Street in Paris, above). He painted some 800 landscapes, mostly of Ukraine, but also still lifes, paintings, and sketches of the places he saw and the lives of the people he met in Italy, France, and elsewhere.
Solitude and Peace
Many of Levchenko’s landscapes seem quiet meditations on humble corners of the world, often where the natural and manmade meet and coexist. Impressionistic as much as tonalist in their subtle value and color ranges, these paintings tend to invoke atmosphere and mood through at times subdued and times vibrant light and always with intriguing mid-tone color modulations.
He studied with Ukrainian master genre painter Bezperchy Dmytro.
Levchenko’s dusks and evenings resonate with a solitude and a peace we are the better for having visited.
