Halyna Neledva

Halyna Neledva was a Ukrainian painter, considered one of the most prominent representatives of late twentieth-century nonconformist art in Ukraine. Neledva worked predominantly in the field of oil painting with experimentation in portraiture, still lifes, landscapes, and genre painting. Her work also included monumental art in the form of frescoes, drawings, and book illustration. Her artwork thematically explores folk song and culture, as well as Christianity. Neledva worked in the styles of lyrical realism, mystical realism, and expressionism, and in the “severe style.” After the Chornobyl tragedy in 1986, the artist described her style as “eschatological realism,” rooted in the values of a Christian worldview.

Halyna Neledva successfully graduated from the Taras Shevchenko State Art High School in 1957 and immediately entered the Kyiv State Fine Arts Institute (now National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture), studying in the workshop of Karpo Trokhymenko (1885–1979). In 1957, she married Viktor Ryzhykh (1933–2021), who would later become a famous People’s Artist of Ukraine. In 1959, as Neledva noted in her book Autobiography, “due to a serious heart disease, I was forced to take a leave of absence, and then completely leave my studies at the institute. ” [1] Trokhymenko stated, “I have known Halyna Oleksandrivna Neledva since 1957 as a talented young artist who works with intensity and creativity and has repeatedly participated in art exhibitions.” [2] In his recommendation for Neledva’s admission to the Union of Artists, the institute professor, Vasyl Zabashta (1918–2016), wrote: “In her studies, she distinguished herself through her achievements in drawing and painting, and especially in the ability to compose a variety of different subjects. Due to health reasons, she was unable to graduate from the institute. But even at home, she continued to work on herself. Thanks to her perseverance and principled nature, she managed to achieve good results.” [2] In 1967, the artist Oleksii Oriabinskyi noted: “For a fairly long time, particularly for an artist, I have been watching the unfolding of Halyna Neledva’s creative personality with interest and pleasure. She is a serious master of form. Her unusual talent manifested itself even when her peers were busy with their boring studies. She made her own path in her studies and continues to make her path in art.” [3]

Between 1963 and 1964 Neledva worked as an artist of the Kyiv Society of Artists and, from 1964, she worked as an Artist of the Kyiv Production and Creative Art Combine (kombinat). The following year, she became a member of the Union of Artists of the Ukrainian SSR. Around this time, she was also working in the field of book art as an illustrator, such as producing art for the book My Son by Hanna Kotyk. [4]

Neledva took part in the All-Union Exhibitions of Fine Art held in Moscow and repeatedly received the highest awards and prizes. In 1968, she was awarded a Silver Medal at the exhibition Sport in the Art of the USSR, in 1972 received the Prize for the Best Work of the Year in the USSR, and in 1979 received the Medal of the Union of Artists of the USSR for a series of portraits of her contemporaries. In 1989, Neledva was awarded the Prize of the Union of Artists of the USSR at the All-Union Painting Competition and received the right to work in a studio in Paris for two months. During this Parisian period in 1990, she created fourteen paintings. Later that same year, she was awarded the title of Honored Artist of Ukraine.

Among the first works that appeared at the All-Union exhibitions was Тарас Шевченко –студент Петербурзької академії мистецтв [Taras Shevchenko—a Student of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts] (1964). Its composition is minimalistic and depicts a lonely hero against the background of the Neva, with the architectural complex of the Admiralty visible on the distant shoreline. The landscape unfolding near the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts acquires a symbolic weight as the white snowy plains isolate the figure, and the breath of winter intensifies the cold surrounding Shevchenko and his only compatriot of the sculptural sphinx, together in a foreign land. Neledva approached the image of the poet-artist with a personal empathy, so Shevchenko’s depiction feels sincere and not overly reliant on pathos.

Gravitating towards minimalism, Neledva’s artistic approach in the 1960s drew on the severe style, which is best exemplified in her work Спортсмени [Athletes] (1967), for which the artist was awarded the Silver Medal. The painting features large planes of color, intensified rhythm in linework, and emphasis on geometric forms. Despite an overall fidelity to nature, the artist exaggerated the proportions of the figures and elongated them in a manner reminiscent of Gothic art.

During this period (1966–67), Neledva worked in the field of monumental art, in collaboration with Viktor Ryzhykh and Oleksii Oriabinskyi. She designed the Zamok [Castle] restaurant in Kislovodsk and created the fresco Caucasian Legend, which measured 65 square meters.

In easel painting, Neledva dynamically changed her style. In the work Онуки [Grandchildren] (1968), her approach gravitated towards an intensified use of decorative features and the poetics of folk painting. This was inspired by the subject matter of the bright children’s toys and vibrant ornamentation of the tapestry. The artist carefully balances the piece’s formal features: Where the circular forms multiply, the work’s diagonal and convex lines create a sense of dynamic movement, while the tapestry’s symmetrical pattern and contours of the man’s figure emphasize stillness. Neledva skillfully conveys the spiritual atmosphere of a home in which children are bustling around and their grandfather provides a feeling of reliable comfort.

In Туристи [Tourists] (1971), which was accepted for the All-Union Exhibition, the decorativeness of blue, red, and ocher is complemented and complicated by the nuanced shades of the larger mass of color, working just as the masters of the classical era of European art (e.g., Titian, Paolo Veronese, Diego Velázquez). We can observe this tradition in Tourists, as young people at the station play guitars against the background of a carriage.

Neledva was always interested in images of her contemporaries, particularly creatives. This fascination extended to masters of musical instruments and stoneware, such as in Майстри [Masters] (1975) and Базар у Терджолі [Bazaar at Terjola] (1980). However the closest people to her were professional artists, as we can see in the work Мої друзі [My Friends] (1966). Neledva created a gallery of portraits that has become especially valuable today for the significance of her subjects in Ukrainian art history: Портрет Сергія Пустовойта [Portrait of Serhii Pustovoit] (1971), Портрет художника Віктора Рижих [Portrait of the Artist Viktor Ryzhykh] (1972), Портрет Валерії Спиридонової [Portrait of Valeriia Spyrydonova] (1973), Льоша Орябинський [Liosha Oriabinskyi] (1975), Портрет мистецтвознавиці Анни Заварової [Portrait of the Art Critic Anna Zavarova] (1976), and Портрет Валентина Реунова [Portrait of Valentin Reunov] (1978).

Halyna Neledva valued the aura of creativity too, found in museums (Біля музею [At the Museum] [1977]) and in concert halls (Концерт [Concert] [1978]). She cherished the places where art was born: У майстерні [In the Studio] (1970), У майстерні [In the Studio] (1975), Натюрморт з атрибутами художньої праці [Still Life with Traces of Artistic Work] (1971), Натюрморт у майстерні [Still Life in the Studio] (1976).

The artist enthusiastically welcomed the experience of discovering new cities and cultures when she was on creative trips. It was thanks to experiences such as these that we can now see Neledva’s images of Crimea and the Caucasus.

Neledva visited Crimea many times throughout the 1970s. She depicts Yalta in her paintings in a style reminiscent of mystical realism: deserted streets and courtyards, houses with clear geometric forms, and a kind of mysterious silence that recalls the works of Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978). Neledva shared a similar point of view with the Italian master, whose works informed how she felt about Yalta, when the waves of noisy vacationers subside and an unusual silence falls as the city freezes until the next summer season. Neledva’s use of color is similarly muffled and minimally applied to emphasize the planes of its silent houses and the frozen surface of the sea: Дворик у Ялті [Courtyard in Yalta] (1975), Нічна Ялта [Night Yalta] (1975), Осінь у Ялті [Autumn in Yalta] (1977).

Neledva’s images of the Caucasus are filled with songs and folk dances, traditional crafts, and the art of baking bread. The mountains and stone towers serve as eternal decorations for the theater of life she depicts. In the 1980s, the artist discovered the exotic and natural beauty of another culture, in particular the folklore and songs of life in the Georgian regions of Kakheti and Imereti. Her fascination with and impressions of these places are carefully relayed in such artworks as Кахетинський хліб [Kakhetian Bread] (1983), Земля Імеретинська [Land of Imereti] (1983), and Свято у Шетилі [Holiday in Shetili] (1984).

After returning from her travels to the studio, the artist seemed to return to herself. She again drew inspiration from her emotions, favorite music and literature, and communication with her artist friends, exemplified in pieces such as Слухають музику [Listening to Music] (1978), Вечір [Evening] (1980), and the triptych Присвята Маркесу [Dedication to Marquez] (1988). A significant number of her works were self-portraits or works depicting a circle of friends in the studio. Still lifes are especially numerous in this collection; Neledva exhibited them to help her examine ideas, experiment with different stylistic approaches, and find a new type of artistic language, as in Натюрморт у майстерні [Still Life in the Studio] (1976) and Bouquet of Dry Roses (1974). Still lifes were a laboratory. Together they allow the viewer to share in the magic of the artist’s search.

Art critic Oleksandr Naiden, a contemporary of Neledva, wrote: “In Soviet times, when “socialist formalism” [sic] in the visual arts imposed a number of denials and restrictions on form, Halyna Neledva, one of the few, was able to open up the possibilities of painting and composition through her choice of theme and the way she chose to give extra significance to certain details of her work. Thus she revealed her humanistic attitude to life. To what is eternal within it. It is understandable that this artist was one of the most famous at that time.” [5]

After the Chornobyl tragedy, Halyna Neledva turned to biblical themes in an attempt to find the inner path to her own soul and that of her native country. From the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, the artist worked on the series of works Твій дім – в тобі [Your Home Is in You], Із світу дольного – у світ горішній [From the Underworld to the Upper World], and Шлях до храму [The Path to the Temple]. She called her creative style “eschatological realism. ” [6] Her painting became dense and the movements of paint were filled with the suggestion of juxtaposing energies—life and death, light and darkness, the tragedy of being. Upon visiting a Kyiv exhibition of Halyna Neledva’s works in 1992, American President Richard Nixon succinctly characterized her work: “This is an artist with their skin peeled off.” [6]

The Zimmerli Art Museum holds an undated painting in the collection, Untitled (ZAM, D10538), which is stylistically close to the works of Halyna Neledva from the early 1980s. The foreground depicts a tightly packed bouquet of flowering branches placed in a tall glass; beside it sits a statuette of a dog. In the background is a procession against a hazy cityscape, its figures resembling the paintings of the Quattrocento period of the early Italian Renaissance. The artist utilized color to achieve unity in the composition, as the image is transformed into the visualization of a dream in which the past and the present, near and far, exist together in space.

Olha Lagutenko

Translated from Ukrainian by Nathan Jeffers

Notes:

1. Halyna Neledva, Autobiography, Archives of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine.

2. Recommendations, 1965. Archives of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine.

3. Oleksii Oriabinskyi, Recommendation for membership in the Union of Artists of the USSR Neledva Halyna, 1967, Archives of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine.

4. H. Kotyk, Mii syn (Kyiv: Derzhavne Vydavnytstvo dytiachnoi literatury URSR), 1962.

5. Oleksandr Naiden, “Dvi doli yak odna” [Two destinies as one], Ukraina 32 (1981): 12.

6. Halyna Neledva, Neledva (Kyiv: Fond spryiannia rozvytku mystetstv, 1999): 4.