Untitled 1975

This untitled painting was made by Vilen Barsky, a Ukranian artist who died in 2012. The painting depicts a lone figure in a boat on still waters. What does it mean to make a realist landscape at a time when the genre has supposedly been exhausted? This becomes a pressing question when we consider the artist’s institutional context. Barsky was active during the Soviet era, where artistic production was heavily shaped by the state. The question of how art should serve society was constantly debated, with realist art often favored for its accessibility and potential for propaganda. Yet, in the 1960s, artists throughout the Eastern Bloc began experimenting with abstraction and other non-approved styles, thus testing the limits of Soviet cultural institutions. We can only speculate as to the nature of Barsky’s project, but careful research into the archives of Ukrainian art might shed light on the kind of statement he was trying to make here.