Composition 1963

This lovely muted painting was made by Hryhorii Havrylenko, sometime before 1984. It's so quiet, isn't it? I imagine the artist carefully layering washes of thin colour to create those subtle, dissolving shapes. There is a vertical band in the middle and three horizontal sections stacked on top of each other. From the bottom, there is a green block, white block, and then a pale blue at the top. The colour is not solid, so it almost feels like each colour is being breathed onto the page. I bet Havrylenko was thinking about the relationship between colour and form when he made this. It reminds me of the kind of paintings Agnes Martin was doing. There is such consideration for the surface of the paper. I really love how artists can be in dialogue with each other across decades, creating these soft, quiet, and yet powerful, images.