Solar Bridge: Ukraine – America

Mirtala Pylypenko is a sculptor, a poet, a creator of a new synthetic genre that combines music, poetry and sculpture with stage acting and light effects. She is also the daughter of the famous writer and public figure Serhii Pylypenko. The works of the artist were displayed at the “Ukrainian Home Opens the Funds” exhibition.

Mirtala’s collection of sculptures is monumental, philosophic and gracious. However, at the same time, it is sunny and brings back the life-asserting symbols of eternal space and time. The artist has spent most part of her life across the ocean (USA), but her soul remains tied to Ukraine. This national spirit and world view pervade all her works. Mirtala was born in Kharkiv. Her father was repressed as a public enemy during the Stalinist terror. The girl was deported from Ukraine together with her mother and sister. It was only on the eve of World War II that they were able to come back from Tver to Vinnytsa. During occupation Mirtala (with family) was taken to Germany as forced labor. The girl went through the horrors of the concentration camps, roamed around Italy and England, and then immigrated to America…

Her journey on the road to artistic achievement was long and hard. The art critics, highly evaluating her works as a sculptor, tend to regard her bronze works as detached from life. As the famous art critic Ivan Halantych noted, “Mirtala reaches almost material clarity in her compositions without burdening them with realistic details: her figures suggest a continuous odyssey of humanity; infinite space and eternal time acquire physical and human dimensions. They talk to us and tell us about our inner nature.”

Man and the universe, the ideal and the material, space and time, beauty and faith, these are all inexhaustible topics that have inspired the sculptor for many years. Mirtala’s works were exhibited at many individual and collective exhibitions in the USA and Canada. Her bronze sculptures decorate over 200 private collections and can also be seen in museums and public venues in Canada, America and Ukraine.

The sculptures attract with their emotional harmony. They are like poems in bronze. This is not strange as Mirtala is also a master of poetry. She published several collections of poems. “Rainbow Bridge” is one of them. A person, with his achievements, losses, and unique inner world, is one of the main subjects of the poet. The reader would find unusual images in her poems, symbols filled with deep philosophic sense, musical rhythm, and a simplicity of expression.

The dominant topic in her sculptural and poetic compositions is a sunny mood: “the sunflower turns its head to the sun.” There is much coming from Ukrainian poetics: “burned yellow rye,” “so that the willows would stop crying,” “shelter of green meadows” and a whole unique world full of fresh winds and life-giving rains. Sculpture and poetry are two sides of her outstanding talent and harmoniously supplement each other.

Ihor Stratii, editor of the National Radio Company of Ukraine, shares his impression: “We can clearly read the solar signs in the sculptures, alongside their monumental rigor. We cannot but notice their connection to the symbolism of the Trypillia culture. It is evident in sculptures like ‘Central Sun’ and ‘Aspiration.’ The ancient ‘scroll’ sign is recreated and symbolizes the endlessness of the universe. ‘Evolution’ shows the development of civilizations, and there is a person in the center with the eternal aspiration to fly to superior worlds.”