Composition 1981

Hryhorii Havrylenko made this watercolor called Composition, and look at those colors swimming together. It feels like a jazz record, all syncopation and improvisation. I like how the shapes aren't quite contained, but bleed into one another. It makes me think about the push and pull of painting—the back-and-forth between control and letting go. I wonder if he was thinking about balance and harmony. Look at the simple gesture of those grey marks, how they point and slice, creating tension. It feels like he’s having a conversation with the shapes. It’s like the push and pull of life. Havrylenko probably saw some Klee or Kandinsky, maybe some Miro, and took what he needed. He was a Ukrainian artist working in the Soviet era, so you can only imagine what he went through to create this piece. Artists need to talk to each other, across time, to push things forward. We try things out, we experiment, and we pass it on.