Viktor Zaretskyi

Віктор Зарецький (1925 – Viktor Zaretskyi (1925 – 1990) is a Ukrainian artist and one of the leaders of the Shistdesiatnyky (The Sixties) movement. He worked in easel and monumental painting. The early period of his creativity is marked by features of Soviet modernism. After the death of his wife, Alla Horska, in the 1970s, he created expressive images of Ukrainian history for a short time. In the 1980s and until the end of his life, he created neo-romantic pictures in the Art Nouveau style: they are characterized by a symbolic, more decorative manner. In 1994, Viktor Zaretsky was awarded the Shevchenko National Prize. The artist's works are in museums and private collections in Ukraine and abroad. 

The work "Planting Potatoes" is from the early period of Viktor Zaretskyi's art. At first glance, it seems like a sketch for a genre picture, but it is a finished work. At that time, the artist was working on monumental canvases, and in the images of rural women and their hard work in the fields, he was looking for an image of the temperament of the nation. The picture is divided into two worlds: light and dark. In the light – the joy of work and peaceful hustle and bustle; in the dark – the unknown future.