Summer 1965

Tetyana Yablonska painted this landscape with oil on canvas, likely in 1965, judging by the signature. The lush greens that dominate the scene were built up with many loaded brushstrokes. Notice the vibrant strokes, the texture, the way the color is applied wet-on-wet, one dab right after another. It is all done with immediacy, in response to the motif in front of her. But more than a direct transcription of nature, this is a painterly interpretation of a collective farm, or a dacha. The very visible making of the painting is also part of the message. Yablonska engaged with traditions of plein air painting to describe a socialist reality, but she did so with expressive handling and formal exuberance. It brings us back to the artist's labor, celebrating it as a form of cultural production, right up there with the work of the farm.