A chance to peep into an artist’s studio
Kyiv’s Central House of Artist hosted a launch of the albums by the talented graphic artist and painter Mykola Hrokh, Watercolors and Graphical Works, as well as his book Outlines of the History of Costumes
Mykola Hrokh is a Merited Artist of Ukraine. He is a graduate of the Kyiv School of Applied Arts, artistic textile department, and the Kyiv State Art Institute. In 1965 he started to take part in numerous exhibits, he has also been involved in book illustration and easel graphics. Besides, Hrokh is the founder and head of the art studio of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine.
The album Graphical Works, published this year by Yaroslaviv Val, is the artist’s workshop. It includes the artist’s sketches from three album diaries, which reflect the process of his creative exploration.
“I wanted to show an artist’s workshop, because sometimes it can be more interesting than the result,” Hrokh admitted in his commentary to The Day. “This publication carries no final illustrations or engravings to which the exploration in my albums led. I enlarged small sketches, with which I have covered the pages of my sketchbooks since 1980, and without changing anything copied the sketches via a light table. As a result I received a new quality of works.”
No less interesting is the history of publication the book Outlines of the History of Costumes. It took 40 years to create this monumental research, being at the same time a monument of graphic art.
“In 1969 Kostiantyn Stamerov from Odesa contacted the publishing house Mystetstvo, where I was working, with a proposition to publish a two-volume book on the history of costume, from the Egyptian civilization till the middle of the 18th century. I got an offer to create the design,” Hrokh explained.
According to the artist, the author of the research Stamerov originated from Odesa Greeks. He knew well the history of the world costume allegedly because his father owned a theater in Odesa before the revolution. Stamerov came up with an idea to publish a multivolume book on the world’s material culture. However, he did not have a possibility to finish the work on the publication.
“He was repressed and still not rehabilitated when the work on the book began. He returned from the camps with three heart attacks. I have met with him only twice,” Hrokh admitted, “When we started to work on the book, the process was very slow, specifically because we sent the rough illustrations to Odesa, and only after Stamerov made his corrections could we start to work on the originals.
But he died before the book was finished. So, my companion and I had to fulfill the work of editors as well. As a result the book was published only in 1979, 10 years later. I can tell you one interesting thing about the author’s personality. Many years later I was watching a program on a Russian channel with formerly repressed actors taking part, and one of them said, ‘I’m grateful to God that I got to the camps because they have become the universities I would have never experienced otherwise; there I met outstanding people, and Kostiantyn Stamerov was a star of the first magnitude.’”
Eight years later the publishing house decided to republish the book. Hrokh edited the work for eight years, remade the illustrations, and verified the materials.
The publication was postponed for 12 years more because of the lack of funding, and only in 2007 this monumental work with detailed and precise pictures of costumes, hairdos, and shoes, worn by men and women in different periods of time on different continents, saw the light.
The artist says the research is also interesting due to very refined small texts. This is practically a history of the world shown via costumes.
