Around the Campfire

Коло ватри

Figures gathered around a shepherds' bonfire ('vatra') in the high pastures, a central image of Hutsul pastoral life.

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About the Artist

Mykola Yatsurak

Mykola Yatsurak is a Ukrainian painter from Velykyi Kliuchiv in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, now living in Kolomyia, where he teaches at the Yaroslav Pstrak Art School. A member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine, he paints Hutsul village life, weddings and Carpathian landscapes.

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Movements

Realism

Realism is an artistic movement that sought to depict reality as accurately and objectively as possible, holding that the purpose of art is to reflect all aspects of existence, rather than merely its idealized representation. The term was introduced by the French literary critic Jules Champfleury in the 1850s to denote art that opposed Romanticism and Academicism. In the visual arts, the significance of Realism as a style is quite controversial, and its boundaries are undefined. In a narrower sense, realism is understood as positivism, a movement in the visual arts of the second half of the 19th century. One of the first realists was the French artist Gustave Courbet (1819–1877), who opened his solo exhibition “The Pavilion of Realism” in Paris in 1855. Before him, artists of the Barbizon School—Théodore Rousseau, Jean-François Millet, and Jules Breton—worked in a realistic style. In the 1870s, realism split into two main movements: naturalism and impressionism. In contemporary painting, realism borders on the grotesque and anti-glamour.

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Also part of

Folk Decorative Art Contemporary Ukrainian Painting

Related Works

Coming to Spring

A Carpathian foothill landscape at the turn from winter to spring, with melting snow among the village fences.

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Kliuchiv Wedding

A wedding procession in the artist's native village of Velykyi Kliuchiv, painted as a broad multi-figure ethnographic composition.

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Frost on the Cheremosh

The Cheremosh river in the Hutsul highlands under early frost, one of the artist's recurring Carpathian water motifs.

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Jasmine

A study of jasmine in flower, from the group of garden-flower subjects that runs through the artist's work.

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