Folk poetics in creative work of Petro Kholodnyi Senior
Authors: Sobkovych Olha 
Published: July 2020

Summary. The defined issue is the new angle to study Petro Kholodnyi Sr. heritage, that allows to research the thematic interest features and style synthesis specific to artist`s original language, where we can trace the modernist style, symbolism, byzantine style and impressionism echoes.

It was observed an important group of artwork by Kholodnyi Sr. in the article. Together with the sacral heritage, they have played a significant role in the reviving of the Ukrainian national art in the first part of XX century - the compositions on the folk themes.

The comprehensive review of the folk poetics in creative work by Petro Kholodnyi Sr., is lightened in context of the current historical and art-cultural realities of the defined period, that allowed to distinguish the characteristic, typical and novel features in creating, by Petro Kholodnyi Sr., the Ukrainian national art through appealing to the folk poetics. It was marked, that Petro Kholodnyi Sr. engagement in folklore was natural in context of two essential interdependent tendencies of that period: the idea of the “national reviving” in the Ukrainian culture in the first part of XX century, among the characteristic features of which – appealing to folklore as the field of the national spirit preserving and “tradition discovery”. It is defined the peculiarities of trendsetting technical performance and ideological-stylistic understanding and rendering of the folk poetics in the visual form, that expanded the idea of this source interpretation abilities in form and sense aspects of that period art searches context.

Methods. For holistic analysis, author applied the following methods: form and style analysis to explore the art peculiarities of the artwork, on the Ukrainian folklore motives, by Petro Kholodnyi Sr.; comparative style analysis to detect the features of artist creation manner and its change according to certain one or other ideological-sensitive or emotional message, and to distinguish the differences, between comprehension and visual implementation of the folk poetics in Kholodnyi Sr. creative work in comparison with Russian artists, who, in their creative activities, appealed to the folk well-springs.

Results. Through folk poetics, which he felt delicately, Kholodnyi Sr. propagates the most current messages of “national reviving” in early XX century. In particular, the Ukrainian national history pages he exposes via appealing to such source of its study as ballad (thought) (“The thought of the Black sea windstorm”), that added some folk-poetic colours to the theme; also he refers to one of the most famous ancient Rus literature memorials of the late XII century – “The Lay of Igor’s Campaign”, which is saturated with Slavic folk poetry motives. In compositions created by these sources, Kholodnyi Sr. not so much emphasized the ballad subject illustrations or historical annals context as the poetic highness. So there is in his artwork, even on historic themes, a strong, musical in its harmonic melody, rhythm of colourful spots and lines. That’s the important individuality of his creations. The same powerful national poetics we can also feel in his creative works on Ukrainian tales, corals and songs motives, where the emphasis is put on enlarging the emotional-sensitivity edge, but not on the external plot, that we can see in such works as “Oh, there is rye on a field”, “Ivasyk and witch” and “The tale of a girl and a peacock”. Poetry and subjective-emotional components of two last creations point out on the affinity to symbolic-modern worldview, where the reality and tale are mixed at the moment. In his works on folk themes, he combined the style trends early XX century with the national painting traditions. Particularly “The Tale of a girl and a Peacock” corresponds by style to plastic language of modern with its emphasized decorativeness, softness of lines and clear lineal drawing, but in composition “Oh, there is rye on a field” we can see the signs of late modern which includes into its art language the method of stylization one or other famous historical pattern, in this case - byzantinism. Both art work performed in discovered by artist tempera technique which allowed to get that colour tints that enchanted in the ancient Galician icons. So these paintings possess you by delicately harmonized tincture which together with folk motive, its subject and ethnographic details, like heroes’ cloths, creates the folk-national sound of composition.