You're reading: In the studio with artist Ivan Lytvyn

“I can't stand monotony: I like to explore different art forms. After I spend lots of time on a careful, realistic work, I then break down, start raging and engage in hooliganism of form and color.”

Riders clad in armor gallop through ancient cities; prancing predators lurk behind thorny bushes; cosmic flowers burst and dissipate like fireworks in the endless expanses of space.
The canvases of Ivan Lytvyn astonish with a variety of subjects, styles and intense colors, which the author himself describes as “thermonuclear.”

“I can’t stand monotony: I like to explore different art forms,” Lytvyn said.

“After I spend lots of time on a careful, realistic work, I then break down, start raging and engage in hooliganism of form and color,” confessed the artist, at 57 as cheerful and energetic as a kid.

“Then, it seems to me, that I began to daub,” he said.

Tired of painting wild, broad strokes, he switched to wood etchings, which involved more precision. Now Lytvyn is one of the few Ukrainians engaged in the ancient and vanishing method of wood etching.

Lytvyn’s studio looks more like an exhibit of several different artists. Flower watercolors on the walls hang in stark contrast next to philosophic oil abstractions and copper embossings of Ukrainian epic heroes.

But all the pieces have one common feature: deliberation. Looking at the paintings, the viewer can surmise how many books the author has read.

Each of Lytvyn’s abstractions contain a dozen symbols, some subtle and some recognizable. These symbols – an egg, representing a new beginning; a trident; a wheel, representing an ancient Sumerian sign; the pagan Ukrainian protector goddess Berehynya – mingle in a complex and beautiful pattern.

Each viewer finds his or her own symbols, Lytvyn says. Sometimes, they see something the artist himself hadn’t noticed.

But often only Lytvyn can help decipher the plot because each painting contains its own, personal story.

For instance, Lytvyn’s space series “Cosmogony” was inspired by publications about UFOs and non-human life forms. Most of his works depict wings of birds and butterflies that fade into space. “Cosmic Nerves,” flickering with myriad strokes, is the most astonishing of the series.

But it is “Bezodnya” that hides a life story. The Ukrainian word “bezodnya” – abyss – literally means “without bottom.” And on Lytvyn’s painting, a black blot in the middle of the bright cosmic world looks like a hole in the canvas, leading nowhere.

“From my childhood, I remember a dell by the village, with a dark, deep lake,” Lytvyn says. “People said that whoever falls in it won’t get out. Cattle, riders and even carriages drown in it.”

Perhaps Lytvyn’s Kyiv series is his most exciting. Lytvyn likes to paint Kyiv’s famous hills, which he had explored as a child, to a stone and scenes of Kyiv’s early history.

“Kyiv is a cool town,” exclaims Lytvyn, who has developed his own theory about the city’s founding.

“Everybody knows that Kyiv was founded by three brothers and named after the eldest,” Lytvyn says. “But if you listen closely to their names you discover something curious. The name Kyi sounds like the Polish ethnicity, Kujawa, which still exists today. The name Schek sounds like Czech, and Khoryv like Croat. Could there be a connection?”

Lytvyn especially relishes the theme of Nordic warriors, the Varangians, who took over Kyiv in the 9th century.

“The Vikings traveled all over Eastern Europe, from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, conquering other tribes, settling cities and trading,” he said. “Just imagine now how convenient Kyiv must have been for them – a river port, on a crossing of several major trade routes, with hills and caves to find shelter and hide the merchandise.”

Lytvyn believes that Ukraine’s symbol – the trident – comes from a Viking symbol of anchor.

He also claims the name Varangians, or Varyagy in Ukrainian comes from the word vorogy – enemies.

“You know the expression, often used in ancient chronicles ‘A mighty serpent ensnared the town?’” asks Lytvyn. “Could it be a metaphor for the enemy troupes – hundreds of warriors, moving through the streets of Kyiv, surrounding the town?”

And Lytvyn shows a painting of a fat serpent crawling up the Andriyivsky Uzviz – the ancient road from the river port to the Kyiv center.

If you ask him how he comes up with all these ideas, Lytvyn will point at heavy shelves, full of books of poetry, history, philosophy and science.

“I never think about the plot,” Lytvyn says. “First I just read and chew on ideas, and then, when the time is right, a painting bursts out of me.”

Perhaps it is Lytvyn’s formal profession that makes him rely on books so much. Lytvyn is a book illustrator by trade, and he has illustrated more than 60 books.

His first illustrated book came out in 1979, when he was 27. It was a collection of poetry by a small girl, sick with polio, and it didn’t come easy for Lytvyn.

“I was a typical easel painter, and drawing smiley tigers and lions was too hard for me at first,” Lytvyn said. But soon he got used to drawing dancing dogs, flirting foxes and crying cranes.

After five years of drawing postcards and illustrating travel guides for publishing house Mystetstvo, Lytvyn escaped to another, more interesting publishing house, Veselka, which deals with children’s books.

In Veselka, he worked in the elementary school department. “Working there was quite hard,” Lytvyn recalled. “Drawing children is complicated in itself, and we had to depict politically correct children, since many of the books were used as propaganda literature for young pioneers.”

But Lytvyn didn’t take long to turn the neglected elementary school department into Veselka’s most successful one. He received numerous awards and his portraits decorated the so-called “honor board” of the publishing house.

But after seven years at Veselka, Lytvyn felt he could no longer work there. “My colleagues called me a fidget. Staff meetings were the biggest torture for me – I just couldn’t sit there.”

In 1985, Lytvyn quit Veselka and became a “free artist,” freelancing for various publishing houses, and in 1987 he was accepted into the Artists’ Union.

In 1992, when illustration orders were no longer available, he began to earn his living by selling paintings, and he enjoyed it.

“I suddenly realized what a tremendous wealth oil paint was. It grants so much freedom, so many possibilities and nuances,” Lytvyn said.

“It feels so cool to be free, free of editors, of the publisher’s policy,” Lytvyn adds. “I don’t care what anyone will say. I just paint.”