At the Volodymyr Patyk Museum in Lviv, a renewed exhibition of the artist’s works has opened to mark the 100th anniversary of his birth. In the space open to visitors, two exhibitions are on display — “Self-portraits Against the Backdrop of Time” and “Journeys That Remain on Canvas”, which introduce different periods of the painter’s creative career.
At the opening, guests were welcomed by Lviv’s Deputy Mayor for Accessibility, Iryna Maruniak. The ceremony was complemented by an outdoor artistic performance prepared by students of the Lviv Vocational College of Culture and Arts. The theatrical production recreated the key stages of the creative path of People’s Artist of Ukraine Volodymyr Patyk.
In the museum’s exhibition halls, selected paintings by the artist are on display. Among them are self-portraits, landscapes and works dedicated to his travels. The paintings stand out for their distinctive sense of light, subtle vision of Ukrainian nature and emotional depth, combining the artist’s personal experiences, historical motifs and love for his native land.
“Looking at Volodymyr Patyk’s paintings, you realise that he saw in Ukraine what few others notice. He had a finely tuned feeling for its beauty and conveyed this in his works… Today, during the war, when our hearts are heavy and losses are painful, you come here, look at these paintings and understand that we have something to defend and protect,” said Iryna Maruniak, Lviv’s Deputy Mayor for Accessibility.
According to Iryna Maruniak, the renewed museum space has been made convenient for all visitors, including veterans returning from the front. The City Council hopes that children, students and older people will visit the museum actively, and that the space will remain a living centre of remembrance of the artist.
Volodymyr Patyk (09.10.1926 — 28.08.2016) was a Lviv-based painter, a representative of the Galician school of painting and one of the most prominent figures in Ukrainian art of the second half of the 20th century. His works were shown at numerous exhibitions in Canada and the United States of America, as well as at a solo exhibition at the “Heshuifa Art Museum” in Haifa (Israel) and in Hangzhou (China).
The artist regularly carried out monumental commissions for the art and production combine, where many members of the Union of Artists of the Ukrainian SSR worked. In 1969, he created wall paintings in the foyer of the B. Khmelnytskyi cinema in Lviv on the theme “Khmelnytskyi Near Lviv in 1648”, and later returned to this event in an easel panoramic painting for the Lviv Historical Museum (Museum of Arms, 1974–1976).
In Lviv’s public space, Patyk’s relief mosaic “Sea and Fish”, covering an area of 120 sq. m and created in 1978 for the “Ocean” shop, is well known. Together with the artist Mykola Krystopchuk and colleagues, he worked on mosaic panels in Moldova, Crimea and the Caucasus, heading a team of artists. Volodymyr Patyk was a laureate of the Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine and a People’s Artist of Ukraine.