The Street

Anatolii Sumar (1933, Moscow — 2006, Kyiv) was a Kyiv architect who experimented with painting for a very short time. During 1957-1963, he created more than 50 paintings that have an important place in the history of Ukrainian art due to their artistic value and the circumstances they were created in. The artist signed his paintings “A. Sumar”, omitting one “m” of the double from his surname Summar. He seemed to differentiate between his two images — an ordinary man and an inspired artist who was experiencing a short but bright moment of creation. Sumar’s work was long forgotten, and rediscovered in the early 1990s.

Modern European art, in particular the works of Picasso, Matisse, Léger, Klee, and Mondrian, had a decisive influence on the formation of Anatolii Sumar’s unique style. The architect’s thinking obviously added to the painter’s hand; and since then, compositional, plastic and coloristic comprehension of space became the main theme of the artist’s work. However, it is due to the presence of space, its physical dimensions and impressions of it that Sumar’s painting does not lose touch with reality and does not fall into the category of pure abstraction.

The painting The Street, or as it is also called, Zolotovoritskyi Square, belongs to the most fruitful period of Anatolii Sumar’s work. At that time, the artist and his wife, Asta Pekker, lived and worked in a house on Volodymyrska Street, opposite the Opera Theatre. The characteristic, Sumarian Kyiv ‘landscape’ takes us back to a carefree, a bit slow capital city which we want to return to from today’s Kyiv — a city that is under constant attack and is getting ready to repel at any moment.

Photo: Oleksandr Popenko © Mystetskyi Arsenal