Село/хати . Village/Houses 1970

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In Severin Kyian’s work, we can observe a unique phenomenon: the professional skills acquired in the studios of Italian masters are combined with the naive artistic language of a self-taught rural painter, creating an expressive blend of high art and folk narrative. The simple, heartwarming scenes of Severin’s native village are rendered through the lens of the Italian landscape school. The amateur artist’s pursuit of realism creates a surreal atmosphere of neo-primitivism, bringing the work closer to a postmodern concept. A narrative unrestrained by cultural clichés gives rise to a multi-layered reality, where the text has no author, and every idea belongs to society. The folk artist’s tendency toward copying is also inherent in Severin Kyian’s work. The artist does not see himself as an opponent of his predecessors; for him, “Bears in the Forest” is a subject of depiction on par with the steppe landscapes of his native village. Abundant unattributed quotations generously treat us to Shishkin and Vasilkovsky, the “Little Dutchmen, ” Perov and Bruegel, Italian sfumato, and folk art motifs.