Composition 1980

This untitled painting by Hryhorii Havrylenko is a field of colored shapes, mostly blues and reds, with some greens and purples thrown in for good measure. It's watercolor, so I imagine the artist hunched over a table letting the colors bleed and mix. I can almost feel Havrylenko puzzling over where to place each shape, each color. The blobs and rectangles remind me of Miro, or even Matisse cut-outs, but with a Slavic melancholy. I wonder if he was thinking about mosaics or stained glass? The paint is thin, almost transparent in places, which gives the painting a light, airy feel. But there’s also a weight to it, a feeling of deliberation. I get a sense that each gesture, each mark, was carefully considered. It's like he's inviting us to rearrange the composition, to find our own order in the chaos. And maybe, just maybe, he's winking at us from beyond the grave, saying, "Hey, it's all just paint, have some fun with it."