LANDSCAPE ART OF SERHII SVITOSLAVSKY: THEMES, ARTISTIC MEANS AND PLACE IN UKRAINIAN PAINTING

Abstract

The article is devoted to a comprehensive study of the landscape art of the Ukrainian painter Serhii Ivanovych Svitoslavsky (1857–1931) — one of the founders of the national landscape school, a leading representative of lyrical realism in Ukrainian painting of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the first artist whose name is associated with the establishment of the social landscape as an independent genre in Ukrainian fine art. The biographical factors that shaped the artist’s creative personality are examined: his studies at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture under O. Savrasov, V. Perov and V. Polenov, his participation in the activities of the Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions, his return to Kyiv, and his long period of work in Kurenivka. The creative evolution of the artist is traced from his early plein-air sketches to his mature easel paintings, in which an ordinary rural or urban motif acquires a profound poetic and social resonance. Particular attention is paid to the artist’s creative approach: his ability to perceive hidden poetry in a simple, everyday motif and to convey it through the means of restrained, lyrical painting. The main thematic cycles of his painting are investigated: Ukrainian rural and steppe landscapes that combine a lyrical sense of native nature with attention to folk life and labour; the Dnipro theme as an artistic image of the river in various seasonal and emotional states; the social landscape of provincial towns and outskirts with its characteristic symbolism of neglect and stagnation; and works created under the impression of journeys to Central Asia, which enriched the artist’s palette with new coloristic solutions. The characteristic artistic means of the painter are analyzed: the plein-air working method as the basis for an immediate perception of nature; restrained natural colorism grounded in the subtle interplay of muted warm and cool tones; masterful rendering of seasonal states of nature and atmospheric effects; and the organic combination of landscape and animalistic genres. The place of Serhii Ivanovych Svitoslavsky within the context of the Peredvizhniki tradition is established, and his contribution to the development of Ukrainian landscape painting is defined as that of an artist who affirmed the lyrical social landscape as a fully independent genre of national art.