PAINTINGS AND PAINTERS. ART MUSEUMS
Art plays an
important role in upbringing our emotions, tastes and feelings, it changes our
views and outlook and mood, enriches our inner world and cultivate love for
people and nature. Great works of art enable man to look at the world as if
through a magnifying glass (зб≥льшувальне скло), bringing into focus all that
is most important and significant. They allow him to glimpse (гл¤нути) that spiritual
exaltation from which a work of art is born.
While visiting Art
museums we make a journey through the centuries, acquainting us with the works
of the greatest painters. Their art is distinguished by humanism, the vital
truth and realism.
There is one more
quality essential to their art Ч each of the great masters of the past was a
link in the chain of mankind's spiritual progress, and each of them played a
part in it, revealing new aspects of man's spirit, finding new possibilities of
its artistic expression.
Art museums
preserve numerous masterpieces which testify (св≥дчать) that art painting
goes back thousands years. Even now we can admire the mosaic and fresco images,
icons which have survived the
ravages (руйнуючий
вплив) of
time. Among the best known icons is "The
Trinity" by Andrey Rublyov,
a painter who opened a new era in world painting with his celebration of human
strength and beauty. His works are imbued (насичен≥) with spirituality
and grace, and the fervour (пристрасть) of his faith, with
the support of his luminous colours, endows (над≥л¤ють) his painting with
immense force-fulness.
The canvases of the
painters, whether Italian, German, English, Dutch, French, Ukrainian or
Russian, are always marked by a profound humanism together with an acute (проникливий) insight (розум≥нн¤) into life, and are
distinguished by inspired innovatory ideas and consummate (досконалий) artistic mastery.
The canvases by Leonardo
da Vinci, "The Litta Madonna" and "Benois Madonna" embody the Renaissance
artists' desire to comprehend (ос¤гнути) emotion through reason, and to create in accordance
with the rules of harmony an ideal of the perfect human being. The works of El
Greco ("The Apostles Peter
and Paul," "Portrait of Don
Rodrigo Vasquez," etc.) amuse us with the artist's penetration (проникненн¤) into the depths of
the human spirit and its eternal discontent (незадоволенн¤). Rembrandt's
works ("Danaya,"
"Young Woman with Earrings,"
"The Return of the Prodigal Son,"
etc.) are striking for their profound insight into man's inner world. The art
of this great painter is concerned with man's relationship to the world, to
life and death, youth and age, the joy of spiritual intimacy (близьк≥сть) and the despair of
loneliness.
Flemish (фламандський) painter, Peter
Paul Rubens, reveals the charmingly innocent nature of the young girl in
his famous work "Portrait of Lady of
the Chamber."
The names of the
greatest Impressionists C.Monet, Renoir, Degas
are well-known for their individual and inimitable (неперевершене) art. In the town
views and landscapes of blossoming fields, so beloved by Claude Monet ("Boulvard des Capucines in
Paris") the world seems to be constantly changing, shimmering (мерехтливий) in the streams of
air and sunlight. Auguste Renoir's favourite theme is the bright and boisterous (збуджений) crowd of a merry
Parisian festival. No less known are his nudes, each of them a joyful, exultant
(рад≥сний) hymn to human
beauty ("A Nude," "Portrait of the Actress Jeanne Samary," etc.).
Painters Cezanne
and Van
Gogh expressed in their works the desire to return to an integrated perception
of the world.
The eighteenth
century in
The nineteenth
century gave us such prominent Russian painters as K.Briullov,
A.Ivanov, I.Repin, V.Surikov and I.Levitan. Russian
art at the turn of this century saw the search for a new content and a new
form, complex and acute images.
In the middle of
the nineteenth century Ukrainian art found itself under the strong influence of
Taras Shevchenko's
art and verse. He created attractive, emotionally saturated (сповнений) images and acquired
his own vision of Ukrainian folk life ("Kateryna," 1842, "A Peasant Family," 1843, "The Scenic (мальовнича) Ukraine," 1842).
Bewitching (чар≥вний) Ukrainian environs (околиц≥) inspired many
Russian and Ukrainian painters to create poetic landscapes (for instance, those
by V.Tropinin, A.Kuindzhi, author of the
well-known "Moonlit Night over the Dnieper"). Nowadays Ukrainian art encompasses (включаЇ) probably every
conceivable trend, ranging from Neorealism to
Post-modernism.