“VICTORY CODE”: THE PAINTING BY OLGA KARPENKO AS A REFLECTION OF ARTISTIC PROCESSES IN UKRAINE DURING THE WAR

Abstract

Modern Ukrainian art has a heterogeneous, rather rapidly pulsating character. Its latest history formally begins in 1991, when Ukraine began to write its own art history. Stages of development of contemporary Ukrainian art in the first quarter of the 21st century became extremely short. The most extreme of them to date has a duration of only one and a half years – It began on February 24, 2022, from the moment of the full-scale invasion of Russian troops into the territory of Ukraine. It was the war that became the Rubicon that changed the value orientations of artistic processes in Ukraine. The article is an episodic review of the creative biography of the Kyiv artist, painter, designer, scientist Olga Karpenko of the wartime era. The purpose of this investigation is to supplement the picture of the creative chronicle of Olga Karpenko, emphasizing the reasons that provoked a change in her style and plot. She possesses all the advantages of genre variety – portrait, still life, plot compositions (of different directions), but the landscape always attracted the most attention – free, fast, sketchy, light. But the main note that affects all of Olga Karpenko's work since February 2022 has become the note of war. A comparative analysis of the painting style of the previous years, when a light palette, textured painting, and impressionistic influence prevailed, with the creativity of the two war years, when both the subject of the painting and the color scheme, was made. The reasons for these changes are highlighted, the analysis is based on the material of the exhibition “War and Victory”, which took place in the “Hlibnya” gallery in May-June 2023. The narrative canvases, portraits, landscapes of the artist, created during 2022-2023, are highlighted, and the peculiarities are analyzed transformations of artistic language, reasons for stylistic changes. Emphasis is placed on colors, rhythms of painting. Two canvases of 2023 are highlighted as a visualization of the “victory code” in Olga Karpenko's painting of the war period.