Watercolors of Natalia Romaniv-Kurylo
Artistic efforts over the past decades in Ukraine are marked with original thoughts, vivid personalities and creating beautiful private collections of galleries and museums: Contemporary Art in Khmelnytskyy, the first private museum of fine arts in Kyiv, Pinchuk Art Center and the Art Arsenal. Observations over activation of renaissance of spiritual forces in Ukraine, their creative self-realization radically changed the field of interests of all parties of the process. Fiction logic forced some of them to continue the scheme of the artistic field built by the teachers, and the others to go only by their own “ego”, sometimes without much sense of purpose; the circuit of resistance to both is characteristic to the youngest ones and all of them together create the dynamics of the overall progress. Sometimes new heroes appear on vernissages as a reflection of well-known works of modern art that coercively spared the territory of Ukraine (read UkrSSR). Hundreds of names and figures are painting overall flavor of contradictions, paradoxes and patterns by vibrating works in galleries or exhibitions, the pages of magazines. In a few decades (we already drew one decade of the new century) extreme insolents of denial logic of art lost, in return a new wave of slashing fellows exploded that magnetically stuck to the protesting positions. One can say a lot about the state of contemporary art in Ukraine and now it is necessary to collect zeal of all, from traditionalists to extremes to see the total picture. Passions of the transition period quietly fade summarizing figuratively plastic achievements of artists who are involved in the merger with source origins of the predecessors.
Natalia Romaniv-Kurylo went into the creative process of Lviv long ago. Behind her there are dozens of exhibitions and hundreds of works with her reading of native culture. In the times of “flowering” of modernism, in the field of deuteragonisms and gallopages of pseudoabstraction, the realistic art timidly, quietly, without much fuss maintained its positions, as if in a parallel world. It was a kind of modification of Romanticism, where the lyrical landscape or still life becomes a prelude to talking about poetry, when there is a place for certain criteria of Beauty.
Sometimes there is the convergence of different kinds of art and poetry becomes the impetus for painting or vice versa. Lyrical realism – and such a definition includes the creativity of N. Romaniv-Kurylo – gradually and steadily develops the demonstration of quiet poetic world among iconic and lovely floral novels, impressionable landscapes or portraits. This does not mean that she can easily find the correct formal systems in wet watercolor technique. It is easy to make a mistake either in the intensity of saturated color or in its pastelness up to the loss of internal stresses of the motive. A quick, even instantaneous reaction at work, intuition and confidence in the final result is necessary. Everything that is not successful or does not satisfy the artist is destroyed without much regret with admirable conviction in the necessity of successful completion of the work. She developed this rhythm over time. Great watercolorists worked in Lviv, so she had teachers to learn from.
Natalia Romaniv-Kurylo had the fortune to grow up in a wealthy family, in wealth and love. Her father Kyrylo Kurylo was her first teacher. He passed through tough reforms of Higher Art School in Lviv, elimination of department of graphics in LDIDPM, and: “… transfer of students of this specialty in the Art Institute of Kyiv and Kharkiv.” (Badyak V. Founders. / / Lviv. 2007 . p.117). Having no vigor to leave Lviv, Kyrylo Kurylo makes efforts in translating him to painters; this happened in 1950s, the events of relentless struggle against formalism rang in the corridors of the institute; Roman Selsky, Yevhen Nahirny, Mykhailo Lishchyner traditionally went under criticism on the meetings… The ideological orgy “locked” the artists in their workshops.
K. Kurylo loved urban landscapes: panoramas of the city, with obligatory presence of trees, corners of squares or parks or crowded Festive demonstrations that traditionally filled the city center. Natalia grew up among silver pearlescent landscapes in her father’s workshop on Shevchenko avenue.
She was surprised with the rhythm in the work of her father, the large formats and gorgeous apparition act of motifs on canvas, and also, the smell of turpentine. Actually, she considers her father as the first and most exacting teacher. Natalia came to the studio and painted. For her, there was no need in making choice of university. The entrants arrived from everywhere to the Printing institute, as it was the only high school of printing which captured all graphic techniques and structure of the book. Laid by father, the foundations of psychology of art lined the model perception of Beauty as the basis of our existence; with such luggage Natalia Kurylo started working. Did she found herself in watercolors immediately?.. The 80s in Ukraine are marked with various events; the creative youth was influenced by innovative exhibitions opening in the Dnister hotel and Maria Snizhna Temple, discussing the first “Youth Exhibitions”, simulation activity of the Creative Youth Club, an active search process of attics or basements for arrangement of creative workshops. In the air, the spirit of uncertainty soared, which culminated by the collapse of “soviet” system. Next, there were an unprecedented inflation, return to historic sources, nostalgic view of Christianity, changing the usual routine way of life, exit from the “underground” of national consciousness; all of this motivated to change. In less than ten years, the Lviv artists lived half a century experience of avant-garde art: from realism to transavant-garde, in the latitude of amplitude from monochromaticism to color “ecstasy”, from reasonable contemplation of the world to the manifestations of spiritual violence. The right to “personal internal development”, “total freedom” in order of priority from abstraction to clear reality of objectivity and figurativeness, stylistic approach to expressionism were featured of the work of many artists. They grow out of the previous decade, with its reasonable caution, confirming their “I”. Everything was important: family (she raised three wonderful sons …), job in her own publishing house, always missing hours in the times… For years, she was able to build a certain rhythm; illustrating books, she learned how to manage time well, because nothing left for herself. Instead, she enjoyed touching the clean white sheets. They became fields of confessions, internal protests, and often quiet contemplation. From the first solo exhibition in the remote 80-ies of the last century there have been many significant events: tens vernissages in museums and galleries in Europe and in Ukraine. Natalia Romaniv-Kurylo has already crystallized views of the world and the art; she is in her own illusions, translates them into a state of dream through endless journeys from imagination to reality. Now forced “isolation” from introvertism of the artist in the world of personal feelings and limitation of external observation leads to deepening intimacy “own”; she is a master of polyphonic dialogues with the world through the flowers. Natalia Romaniv-Kurylo can surely be called a “Bouquet Painter” in fantasy comparison with various subsidiary forms of pots, toys, draperies… In the work, she is passionate, restless, often discontented, she ignores temporary, though successful watercolor “spills”. Strenthened by failure as a hunter, she tracks down the “breathing” of coloring, or assigns away covetousness of chromatic colors in search of purity and transparency of watercolor. Stubborn in trying to win herself, to reject anxiety, uncertainty, in such moments she can destroy even a visually good motive to return eternal temptation, the state of the ruler over motive. She is not of peculiar sense of “merciless criticism”, she believes that the road in search of self-expression acquired only through hard work. The proofs of this are the solo exhibitions in Ukraine (Lviv, Kyiv), Poland (Krakow), Hungary (Budapest), Germany (Munich)…
Her creativity develops in the space between hope and resignation; she walks the thin blade of pending changes, as artistic illusion occasionally makes mild the sense of transience of days. In her case, the connection with art is not useless; often alone with a white sheet and a bundle of feelings, an unexpected opportunity comes swift to fix their own, available only to her, seen and discovered by her elastic “miracles” of flowers. Out of them one can compose stories about hundred-eyed anxiety for the children, bitter disappointment, sorrows of everyday life and to know vitalizing scents of plant miracles. In most of her “Still Lives”, the artist focused her attention on romanticization of homeliness. Sometimes, the flower dialogues are nostalgia for romanticism and harmony in paradoxical disheveled-vulgar world; their presence on the artistic map of Lviv extends the concept of Beauty.
Eustachia Shymchuk, Warm autumn in Lviv. In 2012.
