Over one thousand souvenirs and paintings of the well-known folk artist Nikifor are on view at the Ukrainian Folk Decorative Art Museum in Kiev
The vernissage of Nikifor’s artwork comes from the collection of the Nowy Sącz District Museum in Poland. The exhibition presents unique pieces of his art, highlighting paintings from the interwar period. Tracing a chronological review of his life’s work, it also features archival photography of the artist and enlarged photo reproductions of selected works.
The opening of the exhibition takes place on the 16th of May at 5 pm and is accompanied by a folk concert by artists Yulia Doshna and Petro Trochnalskyj, and a lecture by Zbigniew Wolanin, the exhibition curator and author of a book on Nikifor. Wolanin comments on the present exhibition,
Nikifor is notable for the fact that Ukrainians, Lemkos and Poles dispute his heritage and take pride in his creative output. There are monuments devoted to him in Poland and Ukraine, but this is the first exhibition of his works from Polish collections on the territory of Ukraine
Nikifor Krynicki (1895-1968), whose real name was Epifaniusz Drowniak, was a physically and mentally handicapped naïve painter, dismissed in his health-resort hometown of Krynica Gorska as the village idiot. Isolated both physically and emotionally, he remained unappreciated during his lifetime, yet became one of the most highly regarded primitive painters in the world. His small paintings - mostly watercolors and gouaches - in which he combined realistic observations with his own emotions, were shown in 1932 in Galerie Leon Marseille in Paris, and have been highly prized by collectors ever since.
The exhibition in Kiev plans screenings of documentary films: Jan Łomnicki’s Master Nikifor (1956), Tadeusz Stefanek’s Taki Swiat / Such a World [editor’s translation] (1967) and Krzysztof Krauze’s feature My Nikifor (2004), a portrait of the brilliant, impoverished and eccentric artist that is one of the highly and widely honoured works of Polish cinema. The film recounts the difficult friendship that developed between Nikifor and a young academic painter, yearning for artistic greatness, who discovered the old man's genius and gave up his own mediocre career to nurture that of the greater artist. Highly praised for its direction, acting, lighting and music, My Nikifor attracted exceptional notice for the extraordinary performance by Krystyna Feldman, the late, venerable star of stage and screen, who at age 85 played the male lead as Nikifor.
The exhibition takes place at the Ukrainian Folk Decorative Art Museum, at 9 Lavrska Street and is presented by the Polish Institute in Kiev.
For more information on the exhibition see: www.polinst.kiev.ua
Sources: culture.pl, Polish Institute in Kiev, Muzeum Okręgowe Nowy Sącz
Editor: MJ 15.05.2013