Aivazovsky Kharkov paintings | Virtual Museum Tour

The shock experienced by the artist and depicted in his works. It is an artistic manner that is unbearable for modern masters. Exhibits with the help of which we can follow the history of the artist's travels. The Kharkiv Art Museum. One of the largest museums in Ukraine consists of two separate stories. This is about the mansion of the industrialist and Kharkiv beer baron Ivan Ignatyshev and the history of the National Ukrainian Art Gallery. Built in 1914 according to the blueprint of architect Oleg C. Beketov, the house was intended for Ignatyshev's son. But in 1917 the mansion was resold to a merchant by the name of Levitsky. Then two years later it was nationalized by the Bolsheviks. The National Art Gallery was also known as a place for unique wanderings. It was established in 1920 as a church history museum based on the collections of the Kharkiv and Volyn diocesan repositories of antiquities and the Kharkiv University. Two years later the collection was transformed into the Museum of Ukrainian Art and divided into three sections. In 1931 the artworks were removed from the museum and the National Ukrainian Art Gallery was formed. In 1944 the mansion was destroyed by German shells and the gallery was burned to the ground by the Nazis. At that time it was already the Museum of Ukrainian Art. These paths crossed and no longer diverged. The once dilapidated building together with a robbed and burnt art collection is one of the best museums today. The works of art there were created by both domestic and foreign masters. These are pictures that can truly trace the geographical movement of their author, who is considered as an unsurpassed and inimitable painter of maritime scenery. In our paintings, Ivo Zovsky depicted those moments of the journey, which he carried out 15 years ago when he travelled throughout Western Europe. These are Venice from the side of Lido and Amsterdam and the paintings After the Storm and Night in Amalfi. While reflecting different states of mind and different cities painted in Ukraine, they charmed the audience with incredible Western European landscapes. Romantic work which was the main two years ago in our project Night on Canvases is the Night in Amalfi. Of course, at that time Italy was such a promised country for artists and they were very romantic with the double illumination, Mount Vesuvius, the Moon, an incredible lunar path and coastal cliffs on which the smoke of night lighting was thrown. The Night in Amalfi, as well as other paintings, were not created under the influence of romantic circumstances. In January 1855, an exhibition of works by Ivo Zovsky was opened in the building of the Kharkiv University. At that time, he had lived in Kharkiv for several months as he was forced to move from Feodosia due to the Eastern War. But visitors of the exhibition were not waiting for local landscapes, but those from overseas. As a reminder, Ivo Zovsky lived for a while in an apartment with Taras Shevchenko in Petersburg. And Taras Shevchenko, in his story, the artist wrote that they accompanied Ivo Zovsky on his journey as a gold medalist of the Academy to the Countries of Western Europe. In Venice and in Amsterdam also, well, almost every country gave him the honorary title of an academician. So, in our paintings, Ivo Zovsky depicted exactly the moments of the journey, which he actually made over 15 years in the 1940s, when he traveled throughout Western Europe. On the Kharkiv paintings, places which the artist visited during his foreign business trip seemingly came to life. Each canvas repeats the landscape of each country with accuracy, conveys the atmosphere in distant lands. One of them is Venice by the Lido, which we described in detail in our previous programs. It's a very beautiful landscape, such as the one in the picture. A very beautiful peach-colored sky, a calm surface, like a haze. Venice is a city that really appears as a haze from the waters of the lagoon. It is great that Ivo Zovsky conveyed this calm feature of the sea, the purple waves and a sky of southern beauty. And next is the painting Amsterdam, quite another. By the way, Ivo Zovsky studied the marine genre from the paintings by Dutch 17th-century painters. He studied them, the nature of the stroke and the splashing of waves. As a matter of fact, water is a very difficult subject for painting, but he depicted the character of Holland perfectly. It is a country with a perpetual rain curtain, with such a gloomy sky and windmills, which were only short together with sailboats. In front of the audience rises a completely different nature of water, sky and the country as a whole, and the waves are painted using a very specific artistic technique. By the way, Ivo Zovsky had a special artistic device, the so-called slider. With its help, he depicted his own waves, such as lace foam on them. Experts say that this technique is still inaccessible to the copyists. It is only there that one can see the waves and the famous slider that he used while painting the waves. Another work of that period is After the Storm. It doesn't just show all the power of the natural elements. It conveys the atmosphere of a terrible event experienced by Ivo Zovsky. The painting After the Storm belongs to another direction of the works of Ivo Zovsky. This is the triumph of man in the confrontation between man and nature. Everyone knows his famous Ninth Wave and the themes of the shipwreck, which Ivo Zovsky described very often. Moreover, once he fell into a terrible wreck of a ship and indeed almost died together with his companions. In this picture, there are also the remains of the ship. This was the ship that hurried to rescue the victims when they were drowning. The exhibition opened in January 1855. At the Kharkiv University, it was declared as a charity. All the funds raised with his help were sent for the treatment of the wounded in Crimea. Ivo Zovsky painted a lot of pictures. He donated many of them to charity. He was a very generous man. A lot of pictures of Ivo Zovsky were sent to the auction. As there was an infirmary in Kharkiv, where all those wounded during the battles of the Crimean War were hospitalized. Russia was not ready for this war. For example, it spent about 800 million rubles. And the Allies, the British, French, Ottoman Empire, Sardinia and others who supported them, together spent about 600 million. In addition, after this war, Russia actually had a huge budget deficit. The budget deficit has increased by six times. And it was only in 1870 that in the Russian Empire there was a deficit-free budget. Until this year, there was a massive budget deficit. Thus, economically, Russia was very poor at the time, not to mention the wounded and dead soldiers and the civilian population. And so Ivo Zovsky and many others, landlords, some merchants and famous people tried to somehow help the army financially and culturally and improve the situation in this direction. How many paintings of Ivo Zovsky were created in Kharkiv is unknown. The local newspapers of that time mentioned 25 works. But we know only about those works that were painted in Kharkiv, thanks to the collection of the prominent collector Arkady Alferov. He gave this collection to the Kharkiv University, and among them were four famous works of Ivo Zovsky. These paintings have survived several museum reorganizations, the Bolshevik and Nazi occupation, the fire that destroyed the museum building and many masterpieces. But they did not lose their significance. Today, they continue to fascinate visitors and reveal some interesting secrets of their creator.