Oil painting Portrait of a priest Valentin Dmytrovych Khrushch

№Verne 347

*** ABOUT THIS PAINTING ***
* TITLE: "Portrait of a priest"
* ARTISTS: Valentin Dmytrovych Khrushch
* SIZE: 45x28 cm/'17.71x11.02 inches'
* MEDIUM: oil, wood
* HAND PAINTED: Original painting from our collection
* CONDITION: we tried to convey the maximum information with the help of photos about this product

About the artist: He was born on January 24, 1943 in occupied Odessa. His father was a trawler captain, his mother died when Valentin was 7 months old. Since childhood, he was raised by his grandmother, who instilled a love for art. She took him to the apartments of her friends, where the future artist first got acquainted with the works of Odessa classics, such as Theophilus Fraerman, Petro Nilus, Kyriak Kostandi, Titus Dvornikov - at that time they were in private collections, not in museums.[2]

He received his primary art education at the Odesa Art School[3]. In the 1950s, he studied at the Odesa Art School (teachers Zaitsev, Egorov, Pavlyuk, Fraerman), later he was expelled for his "leftist" views[4]. Since 1958, it has been annually exhibited at regional exhibitions in Odesa[5].

In 1967, the famous exhibition "Sychyk + Khrushchyk", organized by artists Valentyn Khrushch and Stanislav Sychov, took place on the fence of the Odessa Opera House, which became the reference point of "Odessa nonconformism" and was later called the "Fence Exhibition". The action lasted only three hours[6]. Information about this project went far beyond the borders of Odessa, undoubtedly serving as an example for Moscow exhibitions, in particular, the "Bulldozer Exhibition" in Moscow, which took place in 1974[7]. Mykhailo Rybak's photographs have survived[8]. The artists were supported by the editors of the newspaper "Komsomolska Iskra", the exhibition near the Opera House was attended by editor I. Bily, writer A. Lviv, journalists A. Ivanov and Ye. Golubovskyi[7], who organized the artist's first personal exhibition in the hall of the newspaper "Komsomolsk Iskra"[9] in 1968.

Since the 1970s, Valentin Khrushch took an active part in the organization of the first "apartment exhibitions" in Odesa[7], which took place every week in the apartment-workshops of artists Oleg Sokolov, Oleksandr Anufriev and Margarita Zharkova, Viktor Maryniuk and Lyudmila Yastreb, as well as in the apartment of collector Volodymyr Asriev, which was located between the offices of the KGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs[2]. During this period, the name of Valentin Khrushch, as well as his colleagues in the "Odesa nonconformism" A. Anufriev, V. Strelnikov, L. Yastrub, V. Maryniuk, S. Sychov, V. Basants, began to appear in foreign catalogs and exhibitions[10][11]. In 1979, he participated in the unofficial exhibition "Contemporary Art from Ukraine" (Munich-London-Paris-New York)[12].

Valentyn Khrushch was always at the forefront of artistic currents, he communicated closely with the young generation of Odesa conceptual artists and organized actions, although he himself never called them that and did not document them. Among the most famous, the "Bird Exhibition" was a painting hung by the artist on trees, with birds acting as spectators. The second similar is "Exhibition for the Sea", in which the artist placed his abstract painting on the wall of the beach, took a picture and left[2].

In 1982, Valentin Khrushch moved from Odesa to Moscow[13]. In 1991, his personal exhibition was held in the Central Artist's House[14].

Valentin Khrushch spent his last years in the town of Kimry, Tver region, where he died of cancer on January 24, 2005[13]. He was buried there in the enclosure of the Nikolsky temple[15].