Kobza
Кобза
A kobzar with his instrument, one of Kushnir's recurring images of the blind wandering singer as bearer of Ukrainian memory, drawn in the flattened, contour-led manner he took from folk painting.
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Related Works
Red Poppies
One of the two 1961 canvases, alongside 'Trembita', that established Kushnir's reputation among the Sixtiers, its blazing red poppies read at the time as an unmistakable statement of Ukrainian national feeling.
Mothers
A group of Ukrainian mothers rendered as near-iconic, monumental figures — the central work in the cycle on motherhood that runs through Kushnir's painting from the 1960s onward.
Lesia Ukrainka in Egypt
A late imagined portrait of the poet Lesia Ukrainka during her convalescent travels in Egypt, painted as the Soviet system was collapsing and Kushnir's work turned openly to Ukrainian cultural heroes.
Self-Portrait with a Candle
Kushnir's last self-portrait, painted the year before his death and the year of Ukrainian independence: the artist lit by a single candle, a summing-up of a career spent largely outside official art.