Illustration

Anatolii Sumar

Anatolii Sumar (November 22, 1933 – January 22, 2006) was a Ukrainian avant-garde painter, designer, and architect, who remained underground during the Soviet era. He studied at the Kyiv Engineering and Construction Institute but left before graduation. In 1957, he married and worked as an architectural technician at Kyivproekt from 1957 to 1959. Most of his paintings were created between 1957 and 1964.

  • Sumar did not consider himself a professional artist, nor did he associate himself with the recognized art scene. He had no desire to prove anything to anyone — he was drawn solely to the painterly experiment. He was an admirer of early 20th-century European art, which he saw in the museums of Moscow and Leningrad (including works by Pablo Picasso), but he had no access to Ukrainian avant-garde art, much of which had been hidden away in special archives or destroyed. His painterly style was complemented by his architectural mindset — from then on, compositional, plastic, and coloristic explorations of space became the central theme of his work.

    His avant-garde tendencies did not go unnoticed — in 1963, Sumar was criticized and accused of promoting formalism and imitating abstractionists. He abandoned painting and did not return to artistic practice until the 1990s.

    Sumar’s works are often regarded as abstract, yet they are purely reality. A distinctive feature of some of his paintings is the use of unprimed, light brown canvas. He created a series of works titled Color and Music, in which he sought to translate musical compositions into the language of painting, structuring the pictorial composition in line with musical form. These works are simultaneously pure painting and infused with a musical dimension. His craftsmanship is also evident in the technical aspects: in some color sequences, up to 110 segments can be counted.

    According to those who knew him, Sumar was a recluse. This solitude ultimately ensured his individual freedom but also demanded strict criticism — both of himself and of others.

    He participated in exhibitions such as Sixty from the Sixties, Malevich’s Traditions, Non-Figurative Painting, among others. In 2002, the Alipii Gallery in Kyiv hosted the first solo exhibition of Anatolii Sumar. In 2003, he held a personal exhibition at the Center for Contemporary Art Soviart as part of the Museum of Contemporary Art program. A number of portraits by the artist remained unfinished due to his illness.

Gallery

Illustration

Flashlight 2