The History of One Portrait: Maksym Rylskyi and Zynoviy Tolkachov

Author

Skliarenko Halyna

a Ph.D. in Art Studies, a senior research fellow at the NASU M. Rylskyi IASFE Visual and Applied Arts Department 

The History of One Portrait:The History of One Portrait:Maksym Rylskyi and Zynoviy Tolkachov

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the history of creation of M. Rylskyi portrait by Kyivan artist Z. Tolkachov in 1948. The work is kept now at the collection of the National Artistic Museum of Ukraine. The portrait is executed in the chamber technique of pastel, it is filled with a deep psychologism, attentive penetration into the inner world of a great poet, scientist, public figure.

The artist and poet have been acquainted for many years. In the 1930s they have been the neighbours in the famous Kyivan house of the writers Rolit (in abbreviated form of the Workman of Literature). In 1939 M. Rylskyi has written an approving article about Z. Tolkachov personal exhibition, devoted to the 80th anniversary of Sholem Aleichem. It has been published in the Visual Arts journal. M. Rylskyi has also devoted the poem to these works. It has been also published in the periodical. An interest in the artist’s works is nonrandom one. In the 1920s M. Rylskyi has translated the poems of Jewish poets into Ukrainian.

During the Stalin ideological companies ‘on the struggle with cosmopolitanism and bourgeois nationalism’ both the artist and the poet have sustained a stringent criticism. In particular, Tolkachov has been able to return to an active artistic life only in the 1960s. He has created the series of the Ukrainian writers portraits in the second half of the 1940s. These works are of a historical-artistic value nowadays. Maksym Rylskyi portrait is also among them.

Keywords

a portrait, an artist, a poet, cultures interaction.

References

1. HOLOVANIVSKYI, Sava. About the Pictures of Zinoviy Tolkachov. Decemder 11, 1977. The Central State Archives-Museum of Literature and Art of Ukraine, fund 404, inventory 3, dossier 9, folios 25, pp. 12–13 [in Ukrainian].
2. RYLSKYI, Maksym. On the Right Way. Visual Arts, 1939, 7, 12 [in Ukrainian].
3. SKLIARENKO, Halyna. Zinoviy Tolkachov: an Artist and His Time. In: SIHOV, Kostiantyn, Leonid FINBERH, editors-in-chief. Zinoviy Tolkachov. Works from Museum and Private Collections: An Album. Kyiv: Dukh i litera, 2005, pp. 6–34.