Portraits of the 1950s–1970s from the Funds of the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts

Abstract

This article examines the stylistic and imaginative features of the academic portraits created by the students of Kharkiv Art and Industry Institute (the KAII) in the 1950s and 1970s, which are now kept in the collections of the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts (KSADA). It was found that the leading principle in the KAII teaching system during that period was the tradition of realistic portraiture, which was based on the principles of academic tonal drawing and volumetric-plastic representation of the form. The KAII applicants had a high level of professional training in art disciplines, and later the administration of the institution offered the best of them to join the teaching staff of the Institute (O. Martynets, N. Mynko, A. Demura, Ye. Bondarenko). The main components of the art education system of the Kharkiv Academic School of Painting in the 1970s underwent some changes due to the revision of the course of training for artists. Thus, in the 1950s the institute trained specialists only in the fields of “easel painting”, “theatrical and decorative painting”, “sculpture” and “easel graphics”, and in the 1960s new specializations in design education were opened: “interior and equipment”, “industrial design”, “industrial graphics and packaging”. Curricula for teaching drawing and painting for the new specializations were created on the basis of methodological materials of I. Repin Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture; V. Mukhina Moscow Higher Art and Industrial School, and Leningrad Higher Art and Industrial School. The paper shows that later the teaching methods for all the professional disciplines were adapted and improved by the KAII teachers under the influence of the latest requirements of that time. It is outlined that under the guidance of artists-teachers Yefrem Svitlychnyi and Mykhailo Rybalchenko, their students performed academic works that were influenced by monumental and decorative art and design, which flourished in Ukraine at that time. In most of the educational works in the 1960s and 1970s, certain stylistic changes can be traced in comparison with the paintings of the previous years. The analysis of academic works of that period shows a symbiosis of the easel and decorative forms.