Natalia Pohrebinska’s exhibition of paintings and drawings at the Zorya
Art Gallery in Greenwich, Connecticut, presents an artist whose work is
rooted in expressionism. Her imagery is defined by a rhythmic energy of
color, shape and gestural stroke resulting in work of sumptuous
vitality. The content of her work reveals itself through the
suggestiveness of her forms and in their interaction. The confluence of
her aesthetic clarity and the poetic evocation of her markings, at once
personal and universal, defines the artist.
Pohrebinska came of
age as an artist during the heroic years of Abstract Expressionism. As
a student at Pratt Institute (1958-1962) from which she received her
B.A. and M.F.A., she came in contact with some of the movement’s major
artists. George McNeil, a prominent faculty member, was a strong
supporter of her work. Pohrebinska recalls especially fondly her close
relationship with Philip Guston who was an important influence on her
both as a mentor and friend. He was attentive to her talent and her
creative growth. Already as an undergraduate, she taught classes at
Pratt. Richard Lindner, an artist outside the Abstract Expressionist
orbit who taught painting at Pratt and who was an accomplished
violinist, referred to her “virtuoso brushstroke.” Within the larger
Abstract Expressionist community, she benefited greatly from her
acquaintanceship with Willem de Kooning.
In 1963, Pohrebinska
declined an offer from McNeill to teach his graduate painting class, so
that she could participate in a traveling cultural exchange graphic art
exhibit to the Soviet Union sponsored by the U.S. State Department
Information Agency. She was the first abstract expressionist artist
allowed into the Soviet Union where she lectured and took part in open
studio painting workshops. During the trip she met Norman Rockwell who
was also part of the cultural exchange and who became an admirer of her
work.
Soon after her return, Pohrebinska moved to the Catskill
region of New York in 1964, where she resides to the present. In
leaving the vibrant, frenetic art milieu of New York City for an area
with its own strong roots in the history of American art, she had made
a critical choice.
As she moved away from the art’s epicenter,
she now viewed Abstract Expressionism as a liberating rather than a
defining, even confining, experience: “Abstract Expressionism is to
painting what jazz is to music. Both are about the improvisation and
meditation through which I better understand space, time and the
relationship of things.” The movement charged her imagination and
catapulted her unto a personal journey. It provided her a visual
language with which to explore and communicate her innermost self: “My
mind observes as I search for my subconscious.” She now had time to
probe expressionism’s many possibilities. As she looked to influences
that expanded her vision and art, she evolved her own brand of
expressionism. She became a more complete if less “connected” artist.
She asserted in her work more strongly than ever her life-long love of
nature for which she found a ringing affirmation in the undulating
beauty of the Catskills. The space in her paintings became more
expansive and her palette more vibrant. Landscape is the subject of a
number of her small works in the exhibition. Elements of nature, while
clearly recognizable impact the viewer not so much by what they
represent as by their poetic transformation of nature. The artist asks
us to see nature as an instrument of inspiration in the process of
creating a work of art.
“Everything is subject.” These all
embracing words of Eugene Delacroix, France’s greatest romantic
painter, define the creative act itself. They seem especially apt in
assessing Pohrebrinska’s paintings. All aspects of her work, from its
theme to its execution, color choices and compositional resolution,
play a role in informing the work’s vitality and meaning.
Pohrebinska
transforms the images of her rich imagination into works of art with an
expansive range of subjects. One of her key paintings is Popeye and Momeye,
a 6’ x 6’ canvas begun in 1962 and worked on over two decades. In it,
the artist playfully juxtaposes a blue-grey silhouette of Popeye
contemplating what may best be described as a Hollywood siren ─ a Mae
West or Marilyn ─ red lips and all. She thus references here two major
tropes: the confrontation of the sexes and American popular culture.
She also uses cartoon-like imagery in Heart of 1962, a painting in the exhibition and in Train and Bombs,
also done in 1962, but in these works she portrays a much darker
subject as she evokes her memories of war-torn Europe in the 1940s.
For
Pohrebinska, who was born in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, her heritage
plays an important role in her art. The rich tradition of Ukraine’s
vivid, colorful folk art has impacted many aspects of her art. Her
earliest teacher was Ludmila Morozova, a Ukrainian artist who
introduced the young student to color’s potential.
Pohrebinska’s heritage is central to the meaning of her seminal work, Awakening,
begun in 1988 and concluded in 2004-05, the time of Ukraine’s Orange
Revolution. The vast work, 16 feet long and made of two parts is
presently in the Ukrainian Museum in New York on an extended loan. It
is an ode to the land of her birth, to its past and to its future. In a
poem accompanying the painting, she speaks of the “Ribbon of the
past/Future of a Memory.” Indeed, the dominant form of the work is a
rich ribbon of colorful, sweeping abstract shapes dominated by blue,
yellow and orange that runs horizontally across the two canvases. It
evokes the majestic Dnipro River that divides Kyiv and runs into the
Black Sea. In another passage of the poem, she writes of the “Two
shores a braid/gold and blue.” Rarely in her work has the power of her
expressionism soared to such symbolic heights.
The uniqueness of
Pohrebinska’s art lies in the artist’s ability to address varied
realities in which she moves seamlessly between the conscious and
subconscious. Her deeply charged symbols articulated with consummate
expressive skills define her special vision of the world.