The demanded professional sculptor and artist of the 20th century Ivan Gonchar collected characters and images for his works throughout Ukraine. He was interested in rural landscapes, and everyday life, and attire, and customs. He has amassed an impressive collection of over 7,000 exhibits, which in fact became the first private museum.
Biography
Ivan Makarovich Gonchar was born in 1911, at the end of January, on the 27th. Native village - Lipyanka, Cherkasy region, Ukraine.
His parents are from the peasant lower classes. Despite the simple life and lack of higher education from his parents, Ivan felt a craving for art from childhood.
As he later wrote in his personal diary, he greatly appreciated his simple peasant house, family, way of life. Here, on the people's stove, he began to create: plan, paint, write, sculpt, carve. This stove, his house, is native to the people, it was his real hobby. Even when in adulthood he bought himself an apartment in Kiev itself, he still strove for the people. And by the end of his life he managed to build a house, which later became the museum center of Ivan Gonchar.
In 1930, Vanya graduated from the Kiev School of Art and Industry. His teacher was the artist V. Klimov. In 1936, he graduated from the Institute of Agrochemistry and Soil Science in Kiev (which is today called the Institute of Agriculture).
Then there was the army, the call to the front - participation in the Great Patriotic War. Upon his return from the war, he again returned to art.
Creation
Potter is the author of the following sculptural works:
- monument to Ustim Karmelyuk,
- monument to Ivan Gonta,
- monument to Grigory Skovoroda,
- monument to young Taras Shevchenko,
- monument to Lesya Ukrainka,
- monument to Mikhail Kotsyubinsky,
- monument to Vladimir Sosyura,
- monument to S. Vasilchenko,
- monument to E. Paton,
- monument to I. Bridk,
- other.
His sculptures of famous folk figures are very realistic and naturally convey the images of great people. Despite the propaganda character present in them, the monuments to outstanding figures were created very painstakingly, talentedly, with attention to detail.
Potter is also known for his realistic artistic portraits:
- Bohdan Khmelnytsky,
- Maria Zankovetskaya,
- Lesya Kurbasa,
- Anatoly Solovyanenko,
- other.
In addition to monumental portraits and sculptures, the Ukrainian maestro Ivan Gonchar paid a lot of attention to the images and representatives of the peasants.
What this original ethnologist and enthusiastic collector did for his people can be equated with the full-fledged achievement of an entire scientific institute. He researched, studied, described, collected, reproduced, shared all this with his contemporaries.
Unique collection
From the end of the 1950s, he began collecting items of Ukrainian folk culture and the life of ordinary people, he was ready to travel across the country for antiques. All this first time he kept in his workshop and at home, bit by bit creating the first private collection.
By the end of the 20th century, his collection of Ukrainian antiquities included more than 7 thousand unique exhibits. As the collector himself said, he was doing this with the main goal - the Ukrainian people should learn about themselves and their roots as much as possible! He never treated his huge collection as some kind of museum collection. All this he sought and kept not for saving in hiding places, as he later admits in his diary, but for the festive decoration of houses. He dreamed not only of creating a haven for folk cultural values doomed to disappear (if he had not collected them), he strove to create a unique atmosphere - such that any viewer, having plunged into it, could feel his identity.
His first major personal exhibition took place in February 1988 in one of the halls of the Union of Artists of Ukraine.
Admiring and informing his contemporaries of the tradition, Gonchar wrote a collection of art paintings "Ukrainian folk types in the local national dress of the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries." These paintings are still in demand and are exhibited in various halls of Ukraine. And his collection is presented in the house-museum of the Potter.
He built the museum as a home, pointing out to everyone: “This is your home! You and I created it ourselves. With their own hands and hearts. He was absolutely sure that this was already inscribed in Ukrainian traditional art and original culture.
Personal life
Officially, the Potter never married. Therefore, he never had his own family and children. But, feeling the need to take care of someone and pass on his experience, he adopted his nephew Peter, who had lost his parents early. The young man became an artist, and then began to lead the Museum of Ivan Gonchar.
The Soviet sculptor died on June 18, 1993 in Kiev, he is resting at the Baikovo cemetery.
In 2010, in honor of the 100th anniversary of the artist's birth, a traveling art exhibition entitled “Ivan Gonchar. The victory of one life. A year later, in 2011, a memorable book was published about this talented person with the philosophical title “And my house has its own holy truth”. The book was written for ten years by the head of the archival department of art Lidia Dubikovskaya-Kalnenko. The adopted son of an artist and sculptor, the director of the museum, Peter Ivanovich Gonchar, co-authored a book about the great father.
The title of the book refers to the content of Ivan's personal diary from 1969: “I’ll come from the city to my own house-museum and, as if I’m going from a foreign side to my own. Khreshchatyk rages, the spacious streets are loud, and my native language, our Ukrainian folk song, sounds in my house."
