Illustration to the collection of poems by M. Bazhan 'Legacy' 1978

Hryhorii Havrylenko made this illustration to accompany M. Bazhan’s poetry collection ‘Legacy’ at some point in the mid twentieth century. There’s a powerful feeling of looming threat here, a sea of red and black figures, punctuated by a bright blue ground. I love how Havrylenko uses these flat, graphic blocks of color to build up the image, creating a screenprint like effect. Look closely, and you’ll notice how each figure is delineated with slight variations, like subtle shifts in tone, or the way the block of color bleeds slightly. It reminds me that art-making is a process of embracing imperfections and mistakes. The small dots clustered around the central red figure makes me think of a celestial event; a kind of eclipse or cosmic warning. This piece resonates with the work of someone like Leon Golub, particularly in its exploration of power, oppression, and the human condition. As always, this is an image which encourages us to consider history as something subjective, open to interpretation.