Landscape (from the Triptych) 1971

Hryhorii Havrylenko made this landscape painting, part of a triptych, with oil. It looks like he was really thinking through his process. There’s something beautiful about the surface here. The paint isn’t too thick, but you can still see the marks – tiny little brushstrokes that build up to create fields and sky. You can almost feel the texture, like rough fabric. The color is muted, mostly blues and greens, which gives it a kind of melancholic feel. Look at how the colors blend in the foreground, like a hazy memory. It makes you wonder what the other paintings in the triptych look like, and how they work together. This reminds me of some of Milton Avery's landscapes, where he simplified everything down to the bare essentials. Like Avery, Havrylenko shows us that sometimes less really is more. It’s a reminder that art is a conversation between artists, across time.