“Promin” is the name of an exhibition by artist Natalia Hmyria, which opened on October 16 at the Art Gallery of the Igor Sikorsky KPI Center for Culture and Arts. The name is deeply symbolic, as rays of hope for peace and the revival of a full and happy life in Ukraine seem to permeate all the works presented there. Almost everyone who came to the opening to see the works and congratulate their author spoke about this.
"Natalia Gmyria is a graduate of the graphics department of our Publishing and Printing Institute. In fact, she has two higher educations – before KPI, she also studied at the Kyiv State Academy of Decorative and Applied Arts and Design named after Mykhailo Boychuk. This is not her first personal exhibition at our university; the previous one took place 14 years ago," said Victoria Tiotkina, director of the Art Gallery. “In total, 43 paintings are presented here – voluminous, very bright, decorative. Among them are wonderful illustrations for Vasyl Moruga's children's book ”Adventures in the Garden.“ There are also author's jewelry and painted shell casings, posters.” We should add that the exhibition also features the artist's posters and examples of poster designs for performances at the National Opera of Ukraine. Natalia Gmyria, incidentally, designed eight premieres for this theater, creating banners, posters, and booklets.
Her paintings are said to be “eye-catching” because they are so bright and warm. At the same time, they are full of deep meaning, as most of them, according to the artist herself, are based on symbols of the Trypillian culture. These symbols have not only remained in Ukrainian culture, but have also been naturally absorbed by it over many centuries and have become one of the sources of its emergence and achievements.
Today, Natalia Hmyria is engaged not only in purely creative work, but also in artistic and pedagogical activities — she runs an art studio with the same name as this exhibition, Promin (Ray), in her native Bucha, a city that suffered enormous trials at the beginning of the full-scale war. "We were under occupation. But after two weeks, we left through the ‘green corridor’,“ says the artist. ”And we left Kyiv on an evacuation train to Zakarpattia. After Bucha was liberated, we returned. Today, I work as a volunteer—I paint bullet casings, give them to the guys, and they put them up for sale, with the proceeds going to the Armed Forces of Ukraine... The house we live in is undergoing reconstruction, which is almost complete, and it is possible to live here..."
The works presented at the exhibition are very diverse in genre and technique: in addition to the above-mentioned symbolic and ornamental works based on the traditions of the Trypillian culture, there are posters and banners, an interesting still life with lilac clusters called “Greetings to Spring,” and the allegorical “Blessed Ukraine” and “Annunciation,” as well as the tender eternal theme of “Motherhood” and others. There are also poignant posters “Bucha” and “Stop War,” especially the first one — “Shot Bucha” — with a girl's face on a black background, created from the name of this heroic and suffering city near Kyiv, written in red letters of various sizes: “Bucha, Bucha, Bucha, Bucha...”
The diversity of Natalia Hmyria's work and her numerous professional skills were mentioned during the opening of the exhibition by her colleagues and clients, with whom her collaboration has grown into a long-standing friendship. Producer, musician, and director of the music publishing house Melosvit, Stella Krasovska, recalled how she met the artist and how diligently she worked on the design of T-shirts for a restaurant owned by her sister. "I liked her very much, and she was so beautiful. There are some people you just fall in love with right away. At the time, my husband and I dreamed of opening a music publishing house. And I commissioned her to do our first cover. It was called Ukrainian Format... What's more, Natalia did almost all the covers for our music publishing house. And then I opened the agency “Music Garden.” I got her here too: I said, I need a poster with this and that on it. And she did a lot of interesting things... She concluded with her impressions of Natalia Hmyria's painting “Ray,” which, incidentally, gave the exhibition its name and is even depicted on its poster in front of the entrance to the Central House of Culture: "This ray, this hope, it glows... I am now very encouraged by this word — ‘hope’... Hope can be like this. And it works..."
In the photo: works by Natalia GmyraIt should not be forgotten that Natalia Gmyria is a book illustrator. It was she, by the way, who, while working at the publishing house “Taki Spravy,” designed the elegant, capital edition for the centenary of the KPI, familiar to many Kyiv Polytechnic students.
And, of course, it is worth dwelling separately on the aforementioned series of illustrations for Vasyl Moruga's rhyming fairy tale “Adventure in the Garden.” She deserves thanks for this, because Vasyl Moruga, a well-known poet, translator, journalist, and editor of the once extremely popular children's magazine Barvinok, died in a car accident in 1989, and the artist's work brings his wonderful poems back to the attention of today's children. "His works are very beautiful. And this fairy tale is incredibly funny. I liked it very much. And its plot is not really for children,“ explains Natalia. ”I really wanted to recreate it in color. So I made large oil paintings. In the style I am currently working in." Each work in this series is displayed on a separate easel, and in a very imaginative way: above each rather large painting is a book, opened to the page where it is reproduced in print. Undoubtedly, getting acquainted with these works will be not only interesting but also extremely useful for VPI students who dream of becoming artists.