THE ART SCENE: The late Mychajlo Moroz earns recognition in Ukraine and North America (05/11/97)

THE ART SCENE: The late Mychajlo Moroz earns recognition in Ukraine and North America

by Dr. Daria Darewych

TORONTO - Mychajlo Moroz (1904-1992), a prominent Ukrainian artist with an international reputation, is best remembered for his landscapes painted with turbulent strokes and vivid colors.

It is noteworthy that prior to Ukraine's independence in 1991, the artist's work was inaccessible to his fellow countrymen. The publication of a monograph (with 224 color plates) in 1995 by The Art Museum of LaSalle University in Philadelphia, however, has brought Moroz well-deserved recognition in Ukraine, the land of his birth, as well as in North America.

Among the events held in Ukraine to commemorate the artist and his work were: a memorial exhibition at the Lviv National Gallery and a conference at the Novakivskyi Memorial Museum held in Lviv in 1994; an exhibition held last April in the village of Kosmach in the Carpathian Mountains - the artist's favorite spot for painting in Ukraine; and a program, dedicated to Moroz on the occasion of the appearance of the monograph, that was aired in January on Ukraine's State Radio, with host historian Fedir Pohrebennyk.

This summer, various archival material and reproductions of the artist's work will be on display in Kyiv at the Buclynak Vchytelia, formerly the building of the Central Rada. Also, the director of the Ternopil Regional Museum, Venedykt Lavryniuk, has invited Irena Moroz, the artist's widow, to bring an exhibition of her husband's art work to Ukraine. The Ternopil Museum will be marking the fifth anniversary of the artist's death with an exhibition this summer.

The interest in the art of Mychajlo Moroz in Ukraine is not surprising, considering that he was Oleksa Novakivskyi's favorite student and a well-known artistic figure in Lviv prior to World War II. In the 1930s Moroz gained prominence as a painter of Carpathian landscapes and of the Hutsuls in the Kosmach area.

Moroz was born on July 7, 1904, in the village of Plikhiv in the Ternopil region. In 1923 he became a student in the newly established Novakivskyi School of Art, where he studied until 1927. The next two years were spent studying art in Paris on a scholarship from Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky. In Paris Moroz studied at the Académie Julian and the Conservatoire Nationale des Arts et Métiers.

While in Paris Moroz met such renowned Ukrainian artists as Oleksa Hryshchenko (Alexis Gritchenko), Mykola Hlushchenko and Vasyl Khmeliuk, who were also working in Paris in variations of the expressionist style. In Paris Moroz met the famous French artist and father of the fauvist movement, Henri Matisse. The direct encounter with the Ecole de Paris, particularly the experience of French expressionists, had a strong impact on Moroz. It reaffirmed his interest in Post-Impressionist art, derived from his studies with Novakivski, and validated his affinity for expressive colors and forms.

In one of his paintings of the French period, "La Manche" (1929), all the elements associated with Moroz's mature sensibility are already in place: the exuberant brush strokes, the intensity, vivid colors, the spontaneity of the palette, the heavy impasto of oils, as well as the correlation between the emotional state of the artist and his response to the observable phenomena of nature.

In 1931 Moroz traveled to Italy accompanied by his former teacher, and in 1932 he became Novakivskyi's assistant. Together they made trips to the picturesque Carpathian Mountains and were inspired to paint numerous works of the land and its people. The events of World War II and the occupation of western Ukraine by the Soviet Union interrupted Moroz's work and forced him to seek asylum for his young wife, Irena, and infant son, Ihor, in Germany.

Although he lost some 800 paintings, a painting of his wife and child, "Motherhood" (1944), survived. It shows a young mother dressed in Hutsul dress and is reminiscent of icons of the Hodegitria type in the positioning of the figures and hands. Generally speaking, the paintings done in Germany were more restrained in color and brushwork and more reminiscent of Impressionism.

In 1949 Moroz and his family settled in New York, where he continued to make a living as an artist. In January, 1959 he had his first of five solo exhibitions at the Panoras Gallery in New York. The journal Art News noted that: "Mychajlo Moroz, a Ukrainian, is only a newcomer to New York. The unity of the show as a whole, the fluency, the fast play of brush and color, reveal an experienced painter, a man who sees his scene all of a piece, grasps its details instinctively and with a quick technique lays it out flatly and distinctly." (January 1959)

As a result of the 1962 exhibition, The New York Times wrote that "Mychajlo Moroz is showing lively interpretations of picturesque scenes, some of which tend to go beyond the picturesque to the expressionistic." (January 23, 1962)

Moroz appeared in "Who's Who in America" from 1976 on. In 1979 his name was included in "Men of Achievement" published in Cambridge, England. The Italian Academy of Art awarded Moroz a gold medal for his paintings and made him an honorary member in 1980. An entire room in the Ukrainian Museum in Rome is dedicated to Moroz's work. In 1990 a retrospective exhibition of his work was held at The Ukrainian Museum in New York. The artist died in 1992 on Staten Island, N.Y.

Moroz's paintings, specially his landscapes, belong to the expressionist mode in art. In such early works as "Easter in Kosmach" (1939), it is evident that Moroz is not imitating nature, but is concerned with expressing feelings and emotions. He uses color, form and line for their expressive possibilities in order to convey the sensations he is experiencing.

Twenty years later in the United States, Moroz painted "Hutsul Christmas," an award-winning work at the 1964 Exhibition of 20th Century World Religious Art held at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. The brush strokes are even more turbulent and spontaneous, the color arbitrary and intense, the whole composition pulsates with vibrating color rhythms. The heavy impasto of the oil pigment is energetic and prominent in the figures and the background eliminating depth perception. All the figures, including the Holy Family, are subject to the rhythms of the composition and not to the laws of anatomy and perspective.

Moroz's body of work includes landscapes of the Carpathian Mountains, the Alps, the Catskills, and such famous landmarks in the U.S. such as the Grand Canyon, Garden of the Gods, the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and the Delaware River. There are several views of Hunter, N.Y., particularly of St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church in the changing seasons, and of Staten Island, where Moroz lived. Throughout the years Moroz painted numerous seascapes in France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, the United States and Puerto Rico. Even though views of nature without the imprint of humans predominate, there also are many vistas of famous architectural landmarks, such as St. George Cathedral in Lviv, the Acropolis in Athens, the Coliseum and Arch of Titus in Rome and St. Mark's Square in Venice.

Many of the landscapes painted in the 1950s and 1960s verge on the abstract; an indication that Moroz was aware of the action paintings of the New York School of American Abstract Expressionists that dominated the North American art scene at the time. Space is compressed, the shapes distorted, the palette knife slashes are gestural, the colors expressive as in such paintings as "Mountain Storm" (1965) and "Buttermilk Falls" (1967). However, Moroz never took the next step into non-representational art. Elements of the landscape such as rocks, water, trees remain recognizable. Perhaps the reason for this is to be found in his devotion to and love of the great outdoors, the changing seasons of nature, and his need to share his vision and experience.

Although landscapes dominate Moroz's work, the artist also painted numerous portraits and still life compositions. There are some interesting expressionist portraits of Hutsuls from the 1930s and 1940s, including "Hutsul with Pipe" (1943) There is also a memorable portrait of his mentor and patron, Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky. Of special interest are the self-portraits, of which there are several; they convey a brooding personality in the Romantic tradition. Over all the portraits are not as expressive as the landscapes, the brushwork and color are more controlled and less exuberant. As many of the portraits were commissioned, some by prominent members of the Ukrainian community, perhaps Moroz felt constrained by the expectations of the sitters.

In contrast the still lifes, mostly of flowers, parallel Moroz's dynamic approach to landscapes in the execution and freedom of expression. The vitality with which they are painted and the lavish color draw attention to the emotional impact of nature on the artist. Such still life compositions of flowers as "Canna" (1964) or "Gladioli" 1978 reaffirm Moroz's deeply felt response to nature and his abiding love for it.

As an artist Moroz was very prolific and his heritage is rich and extraordinary. In the diaspora Moroz was not only one of the best known artists, he was a living legend. Even though the themes of his work were traditional, their interpretation and execution paralleled some of the innovative stylistic tendencies of 20th century art.

His achievements in terms of Ukrainian art are especially significant since a free development of art in Soviet Ukraine was not possible for nearly 50 years. It remained for émigré artists such as Moroz to carry on the traditions of modernism in Ukrainian art. It is, therefore, fitting that his name and his work are gaining the recognition they deserve in Ukraine.

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