Entrance to the Genoese fortress 1962

Yuriy Khymych painted this depiction of the Genoese fortress using oil on canvas. The brown of the fortress and surrounding landscape dominates the composition. Khymych has applied the paint in a flat, graphic style, with bold outlines emphasizing the geometric forms. Look closely, and you'll notice the brushstrokes; the artist doesn't attempt to conceal the handmade nature of the painting, and this allows the material qualities of the paint to be seen, retaining a sense of materiality. Khymych was an architect as well as a painter. The artist clearly draws on this understanding of materials and construction in his work. What could be read as a simple landscape is in fact carefully built, block by block, through his artistic labor. By emphasizing the constructed nature of both the fortress and the painting, Khymych invites us to consider the amount of work involved in the production process, and how labor, materials, and context work together.