Portrait of the People's Artist of the Ukrainian SSR Tetiana Tsymbal

Портрет народної артистки УРСР Т. Цимбал

Year1987

MediumOil and mixed media on canvas

A late portrait from the period in which Zaretskyi absorbed the Vienna Secession, the sitter set against a flattened field of gilded ornament in the manner that earned him the nickname "the Ukrainian Klimt".

Portrait of the People's Artist of the Ukrainian SSR Tetiana Tsymbal

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About the Artist

Viktor Zaretskyi

1925–1990

Viktor Zaretskyi (1925–1990) was a Ukrainian painter, monumentalist and teacher, husband of Alla Horska and one of the leaders of the Sixtiers generation. After beginning with a socially observant Donbas miners' cycle he turned in the 1980s to an ornamental, gold-laden manner indebted to the Vienna Secession that earned him the nickname "the Ukrainian Klimt".

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Movements

Modernism

Modernism was a radical, early-to-mid-20th-century cultural movement that broke with traditional artistic, literary, and social forms to align with a rapidly industrializing world. Characterized by experimentation, abstraction, and individualism, it sought new modes of expression to address themes of alienation and social change following World War I. Rejection of Tradition: Modernists rejected Victorian morality, academic art, and realistic depictions of subjects, seeking to "make it new". Experimentation: A shift towards abstraction in art (e.g., Cubism) and new techniques in literature, such as stream of consciousness (e.g., Virginia Woolf, James Joyce). Key Themes: Focused on subjectivity, alienation, the fragmentation of reality, and the quest for new meaning. Architecture & Design: Marked by minimalism, functionalism, and the use of industrial materials, famously summarized by Le Corbusier’s "a building is a machine for living in". Time Period: Roughly 1890s–1960s, emerging in Europe and America as a response to urbanization and technological advances.

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Also part of

Folk Decorative Art Symbolism

Related Works

1966

Prometheuses, Earth, Fire (mosaics of School No. 5, Donetsk)

Zaretskyi's contribution to the nine-panel mosaic cycle made in 1965–1966 by a collective led by Hryhorii Synytsia with Alla Horska, Halyna Zubchenko and Hennadii Marchenko. The central «Прометеї» panel sets two figures raising a flame among cosmic spirals and folk-ornament suns; the cycle fuses Ukrainian folk decoration, Baroque and Mexican muralism.

wikimedia-commonspublic-domain

1903

Girl in a Red Hat

Oleksandr Murashko

1906

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Oleksandr Murashko

1908

Annunciation

Oleksandr Murashko

A rare religious subject for Murashko, bathed in a deep golden light.