Composition 1963

Hryhorii Havrylenko's 'Composition' is a vibrant playground of colours, alive with gestural marks. I imagine it came into being through layers of trial and error, a shifting landscape emerging from pure intuition. I sympathize with Havrylenko—what was it like to stand before the canvas, armed with those brushes and pots of colour? The paint is thick, applied in confident strokes, building a palpable surface. I am drawn to the way blues and yellows and reds collide, those hues singing out. Look at that dark diagonal slash—what does it mean? It could be a shadow or a bold stroke of defiance. Havrylenko, like all painters, engages in a conversation across time, inspired by and contributing to a lineage of mark-makers. Painting is embodied expression and it embraces ambiguity, inviting multiple readings and resisting fixed interpretations.