The lecture was conducted by Roksoliana Kozak, head of the Ivan Trush Memorial Museum of Arts.
A pilgrim of colours and sun, a deep intellectual – this is what his contemporaries called the artist Ivan Trush. Despite the fact that he created many portraits of famous personalities, skillfully conveying their moods and characters, working with people exhausted him. Nature was a delight for the artist, in which he completely dissolved himself, creating a lot.
«Studies from nature were for me a rest after the oppressive work on portraits and all kinds of kitsch related to them. It was a window into my artistic future and the beginning of plans for my future works», wrote the artist.
January 18 marked the 155th anniversary of Ivan Trush’s birthday. He belonged to those people who live beyond the time limit assigned to him. Ivan Trush was born in Brody region, and a significant part of his life, which included years of active creativity, he spent in Lviv, where he returned after studies in Krakow and Vienna and a six-year creative period in the already mentioned Krakow.
It was in Lviv in 1899 that the artist’s first personal exhibition took place, and six years later he organized the first all-Ukrainian exhibition of paintings by Galician and Dnipro Ukraine artists. Subsequently, there were many more exhibitions, lectures, and articles.
Here, in the Franzivka district, which was then a suburb of the city, Ivan Trush, after marrying Mykhailo Drahomanov’s daughter, Ariadna, bought a plot of land where he built a house where he lived with his family until his death. Today, this building houses the Ivan Trush Memorial Museum of Arts. However, due to the war in Ukraine, all exhibits had to be taken away.
It was from Lviv that Ivan Trush went on his creative trips to Kyiv, Hutsul region, as well as abroad – to Palestine, Egypt, and Venice. And he always came back to Lviv. He died here in 1941, and is buried on Lychakiv cemetery.
He portrayed Ivan Franko, Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytskyi, Oleksa Novakivskyi, Lesya Ukrainka, Volodymyr Antonovych, Mykhailo Hrushevskyi, Mykola Lysenko, Vasyl Stefanyk – all these people played significant roles in the artist’s life. Besides that, there were many landscapes, and studies with landscapes.
When he built the house, he made his own garden, where he planted trees and flowers, among which nasturtiums predominated. «The painter called flowers models. He didn’t paint still lifes, because he didn’t like to cut flowers, trying to reproduce them alive», claim researchers of Ivan Trush’s work.
His favorite place was Stryiskyi Park, where the artist sat alone on a bench and drew, drew, drew...
«Each canvas of Trush preserves its own story. Some of them still need research», said Roksoliana Kozak.
Among his most famous paintings there are «Sunset in the forest», «In the arms of the snow», «Moonlit night over the sea», the cycle «About loneliness», the central image of which was a pine tree. Many works of Ivan Trush are currently in private collections.
Trush himself modestly described his own work: «I painted several good paintings. They are sold in Lviv. During 42 years I produced about 6,000 studies with my brush after graduating from the academy...»
