18 July – 20 August 2023
Architect and artist Arkadii Zernetskyi was a very erudite man, a fan of his craft.
He worked mainly in watercolour and achieved great success in this field. But the main thing is that each of his works was imbued with lyricism. All his paintings, whether architectural or just landscapes, breathe with this mood, evoke memories, even dreams. Of course, they evoke different feelings, but they do not leave the viewer indifferent. This is inherent in a truly born artist, not just a fixer. Throughout his life, he carried his love for his work, and what we see here is only a small part of what he did. There are no his northern works here, few Carpathian ones. After all, he was very fond of travelling. He repeatedly went on expeditions, for example, to the Onega River, to the north and to other places of interest where wooden architecture monuments have been preserved. However, he is most familiar with the motifs that depict our Lavra, our ancient and eternally young Kyiv.
This extraordinary man, in addition to his great artistic talent, had many other abilities. Arkadii Zernetskyi played musical instruments, sang beautifully, and was a great athlete. We should also mention his wonderful family, whose efforts helped to preserve the artist's creative heritage.
It is a pity that he lived very little, he left us at the age of 35. But he left us a legacy of his talent, his works, his love for his native land, his family, his children, of whom he would have been proud.
- Yurii Khymych, Honoured Artist of Ukraine, Professor at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture.
Arkadii Zernetskyi (1932 – 1968)
Born on 23 October in Kyiv in a family of employees. In 1950, he graduated from a secondary school in Kyiv. At the same time, he studied and graduated with honours from the evening music school, majoring in violin.
In 1950, he started studying at the Kyiv Institute of Civil Engineering at the Faculty of Architecture, which upset his music school teachers, as they had predicted a successful musical career for him. His love for drawing and painting, which he had been fond of since childhood, determined his choice.
While studying at the institute, in 1950-1956, he spent a lot of time drawing and painting. A sketchbook and paints were his constant attributes. At any time of the year, in any weather, every day he went out into nature and painted sketches. "Not a single day without one or two works!" was his motto. These were the years of his creative self-determination.
He was deeply engaged in self-education, spent a lot of time in libraries, visited exhibitions, art museums, and got acquainted with the works of other artists.
In 1956, after graduating from the institute, the head of the Department of Drawing, Professor Yurii Petrov, offered Arkadii a place at the Department of Painting. During this period, Zernetskyi developed friendly and full of creative mutual understanding relations with his colleague at the department, the artist Yurii Khymych. While working at the institute, the artist continued to work and experiment a lot. Having achieved significant success in the watercolour technique, he switched to the gouache painting technique. This allowed him to create compositions of natural landscapes and architectural monuments more freely.
In 1962, Arkadii Zernetskyi was accepted as a member of the Union of Architects of Ukraine.
In 1964, he was sent from the Kyiv Institute of Civil Engineering to the postgraduate study at the Moscow Institute of Architecture for three years at the Department of Painting. During his postgraduate studies, he continued to work hard. In his free time, he travelled with a sketchbook and created colourful compositions of architectural monuments, conveying the originality of natural landscapes.
Studying architectural monuments in nature, observing natural landscapes, improving his skills in conveying the beauty of natural phenomena in all seasons: spring, hot summer, golden autumn, snowy winter, the artist prepared himself for creative expression – the search for a compositional reflection of the historical monuments of his homeland – Ukraine.
Arkadii Zernetskyi's dream was to create a series of works on the architecture and life of the ancient Slavs. But, unfortunately, this dream did not come true. Arkadii Zernetskyi passed away early. He died on 22 August 1968, he was 35 years old.
Organiser: Fedir Zernetskyi, owner of the «Epoch» auction house, collector, art critic.
Project team: Olena Borymska, Oleksandra Ryzhova, Anastasiia Shvydiuk, Oleksandra Kabakova, Iryna Khomenko.
Design: Malika Umarova.
The full ticket price is 100 UAH.
