Matter of life

Art is a high concentration of professional skill.

Alexey Petrenko 

In 2016, the album-catalog by Alexey Petrenko was published. 137 paintings and graphic works of the artist are presented there. And on the last pages of the publication, the photos from Alexey Andreevich’s family album — the faces of people dear to him — were published as the artist’s gratitude for all that has been achieved and experienced. His mother Maria Terentievna and father Andrey Zakharovich, brother Vasily and sister Praskovya, aunt Polya and uncle Ivan. They had already passed away but left an indelible mark on the life of the artist. And here he is, very young yet. At about that age, he met Lyudmila Vasilyevna, who became his wife and gave birth to sons Alexey and Bogdan. In other photos, Alexey Petrenko Sr., is at the easel and completely gray already. The years are running, fashion trends and attitudes in society are changing, but the artist, forgetting about everything vain, captures the beauty of the world around on canvas to keep it for the descendants.

The Memory

Alexey Petrenko was born on April 15, 1941, two months and seven days before the war began. His most vivid memory of his mother is connected with her story about the first bombardment of Kiev and the surrounding area.

My mother recalled ‘We ran in the direction of Davydovka. When the bombing began, I fell into the furrow, covering you. I thought: if I die, you will live.’

Listening to these stories, I asked her ‘What was the point of leaving me alive in infancy, if I would have died anyway without you?’ But the mother’s heart wasn’t thinking. She covered me from death with her body and didn’t think about anything else.

Fortunately, both the son and the mother survived.

Alexey’s childhood was in Markhalevka, where his grandfather, a wealthy peasant and churchwarden Zakhar Korneyevich Petrenko once had a beautiful house with a carved oak porch and a large iconostasis in the room. In the pantry they kept bread and household utensils.

That is why one of my still lifes is called “In the pantry”. This memory still lives in me...

Alexey Petrenko. "In the pantry". 2013

The picture, filled with patriarchal mood, looks very harmonious and envelops the viewer with a feeling of sweet sadness over what is gone. But for the artist himself, this is not just a pressing nostalgia, but also very heavy memories. After the revolution, grandfather Zakhar was deprived of everything. He died of hunger in 1933, and in 1947 his grandson, six-year-old Alexey Petrenko, needed to be saved from starvation.

My father worked on a collective farm for work days. There was no monetary form of payment in the villages at that time; therefore everything that one could bring from work was an armful of birch wood chips to heat the furnace.

My mother also worked on the farm for the “sticks”, but you can’t feed children with them. The 1946^th and 1947^th were the most terrible years;it was the period of mass starvation in Ukraine

In addition to his father and mother, Alexey Andreevich recalls his aunt Polina (his mother’s sister) with great gratitude and warmth. She was very small and slender, led an ascetic life, and she needed very little food. Therefore, instead of eating by herself, she gave everything to her nephew.

Aunt Polya used to say ‘You sit on the furnace, and I’ll go to the mill and take bran, and gather some potatoes in the field.’

Then she brought home frozen rotten potatoes, mixed it with bran, bake black round tortillas and treat me. Here, she said, I baked you some draniks (potatoe pancakes – transl.).

She also had a goat. Aunt Polya took me by the hand and led me through the whole village to feed me with goat cheese, which she made especially for me. And she could barely move her feet from starvation...

I also remember gifts from my aunt Khimka, who lived in Khrushinka. On the Ascension, they celebrate a temple holiday, and my aunt always baked pies with viburnum and poppy seeds in honor of this day. And with the pies she gave us pumpkin seeds and nuts...

The memory of Alexey Petrenko has an amazing ability to keep only bright moments of life. Even talking about difficult periods, Alexey Andreevich does not focus on his own suffering, but recalls with gratitude people who were close by. He speaks very little about himself - only about his family, teachers, friends, students. Yes, and what to tell anyway, if the only thing Petrenko lived and lives for is a passion for painting - a huge, kind of unusual attraction; it is very strong and sweet aspiration.

More than a Hobby

The first drawing lessons he was taught by his father, who mastered the brush and pencil well.

My father showed me how to draw a sailor, and I made countless copies of that picture, until I bagan to draw the sailor very well. 

The boy wanted to draw so much that he couldn’t do anything else. After the seventh grade, he single-handedly went to Odessa to enroll in an art school. And, of course, he failed the entrance exams, because he didn’t even know the basics taught to children in art schools.

Returning to Markhalevka and completing ten grades, Alexey went to work as a grinder at the Kiev Machine-Building Plant. And when the shift ended, he hurried to an art studio where he was painting. At that time it was located in the premises of the Novoaleksandrovsky church, therefore it was not by chance that Alexey Petrenko subsequently depicted this Catholic church in his paintings more than once.

And this is not the only example when painted images seemed to be superimposed on events in real life. Little Alyosha, apparently, did not know that his thoughts were material, so he could not even assume that he himself would become that sailor that he drew so selflessly dozens of times.

From 1960 to 1964, four years and 17 days, I served as a radarman on a ship in Sevastopol. There was no opportunity to be engaged in painting there, but I spent all the layoffs in the sailor’s club, where I watched the children and adults painting. The unfulfilled desire to take the brush in my hands raged in me, tormented me, so in the fourth year of service I began to take lessons from Pavel Petrovich Miroshnichenko, who at that time was in charge of the Sevastopol City Fine Art Studio.

Alexey returned from the army at the age of 23. Having returned, he first of all resumed his studies at an art studio.

I came in a sailor’s jacket. Seeing me, the assistant Olga Evgenievna Zakharova appealed to some man ‘Meet, here’s our sailor came back from the fleet.’ This man was Naum Yakovlevich Bogomolny, a famous Ukrainian graphic artist and a very friendly, positive person. Subsequently, when I was already studying at the Kiev State Art Institute, he often helped me.

In the Institute

Alexey Petrenko became a student at the age of 27, being a family man already. He managed to pass a strict competitive selection only on the second attempt. But if he hadn’t passed, he would have tried it for the third time, and for the fifth time, because he didn’t imagine himself to be anyone else, just an artist.

I didn’t care about anything else, I loved only painting. During my study I was told about one person who tried to enter eight times and was only lucky with the ninth attempt. I understand him perfectly and, if I had to, I would have acted in the same way.

Alexey Petrenko chose the easel graphics specialization and graduated from the creative workshop of Professor Ivan Selivanov.

I had excellent teachers: Ivan Mikhailovich Selivanov, Valentin Dmitrievich Sergeev, Nikolai Tarasovich Popov, Leonid Ilyich Chichkan, Mikhail Alekseevich Ryasnyansky. These people taught me, raised me as an artist, and I will always be grateful to them for that.

Learning was not easy for a guy. It was because of Alexey did not have an elementary art education, because he did not end either a specialized school, or an art school or a technical school. Fellow students (and it was mostly metropolitan youth) looked down their noses on the guy from the village. However, he already had his experience in the navy, so he could stand up for himself in the student environment. It was more difficult with the teachers; the one disliked him, and clearly underestimated his grades. It hurt the creative ego of Alexey. However, all attacks came to an end in the fourth year.

When we returned from the summer practice and exhibited our works, my classmate and good friend Anatoly Veresha said that this teacher told the students: go and look at the works of Petrenko, this is how you shoul do your practice.

And although Alexey Petrenko was not an excellent student at the institute, he defended his graduate work with honors. It was easel graphics, made in the technique of lithography. A series of “Lieutenant Schmidt” consisted of five sheets: the first is the lithograph “Oath” (62 x 58), the central triptych “Uprising” (55 x 37; 55.5 x 88.5; 55.5 x 37) and the final sheet is “The Execution of Revolutionaries” (62 x 56).

The work was presented at the Sixteenth All-Union Exhibition of diploma works by students of art schools of the USSR graduating from 1973–1974 and entered into a catalog published in Moscow (Art. 52).

Subsequently, the lithographs by Aleksey Petrenko were bought by the State Museum of Heroic Defense and Liberation of Sevastopol and the Sudkovsky Ochakov Museum.

"The Color Should Be with Me"

So why does Alexey Andreevich, who was thought to have the future of a successful graphic artist, paint mostly with oil? Moreover, he declared himself as a painter almost immediately after graduation.

At first, many were surprised by my “reorientation”, although in reality there was no reprofiling: at the graphic faculty we studied the same color and tonal relationships as the painters. However, the graphics were taught to paint only with watercolor. But I felt that I was pleased with the color and I should be near the color or the color should be with me. It tormented me, didn’t leave me.

In 1975, Alexey Petrenko gave two watercolor pictures to the republican exhibition, and when he came to pick them up after the closing of the exhibition, he found out that both of them had gone to Moscow for an all-Union exhibition.

Then one of the experienced artists advised me to be ready for the next exhibition of watercolors. But it was not only this technique that attracted me, I wanted to try others: tempera, gouache, oil.

Gradually, the artist increasingly tended to the oil painting.

In 1978, after participating in ten republican and three all-Union art exhibitions, Alexey Petrenko successfully passed all bureaucratic “sieves” and was accepted in the Union of Artists of the USSR.

And then there came the years of intense, daily work of a professional artist, requiring, in addition to talent, discipline and willingness to sacrifice. Alexey Andreyevich never knew what leisure was; he didn’t know how and didn’t want to rest: he worked hard in the workshop, often went to the open-air, actively exhibited. At the same time, he always and everywhere felt the support of the family. His beloved wife was near, the sons grew and pleased their parents.

In 2009, after the death of his wife, Alexey Andreevich left the capital and moved to his native village. When he lived in Kiev, he decided to build the house in Markhalevka. He did not look for a place; he built a new mansion near the parent hut, a wall in a wall. He built on his own project, for a long time, but qualitatively, so that it would stay for cenuries. The sons helped the father in everything, and when the finishing works were completed, the eldest, Alexey (also an artist) moved here with his family for permanent residence. A new life began in the estate.

Everything worked out: both a beautiful house and a room on the second floor, where pictures of the two Petrenko, a father and a son, hang on the walls. Here are the portrait of Taras Shevchenko and the icon of the Mother of God left by aunt Polya for Alexey.

Own Studio

He left a big city having everything: museums, theaters, galleries, art schools; he settled in his native village and founded a school-studio here, so that Markhalevka boy who dreams of becoming an artist could have a teacher Alexey Petrenko didn’t have before.

The studio opened on December 12, 2010. Weekly on Saturdays and Sundays, the artist conducts classes with children and feels very good, because the paintings of his students are located here; here he is among his people and does not depend on anyone.

In order to preserve personal freedom and creative freedom, for all the years of the school’s existence, Alexey Petrenko did not accept any hryvnia from anyone. Even when the studio was given exemplary status and the village head said that now the teacher will receive a salary from the village council, Petrenko refused.

I don’t need any money. I’m like a bird on the tree. It sings if it wants and doesn’t sing if doesn’t want.  

He insists on the artist’s right to decide for himself how to build relationships with students, how to teach. For example, he starts his classes not on September 1, as is customary in municipal childcare facilities, but according to the old artistic tradition - on October 1, when art education institutions begin to study.

In addition, Petrenko declared a categorical protest against the fact that officials announced his studio exemplary children studio.

My main condition is the school exists for everyone. Anyone may come to us regardless of the age, whether he is seven or ninety years old.  

Once, Tatyana Ivanovna Zakharchenko, a drawing teacher at a local comprehensive school, became one of such adult students. She came to the first lesson with her students. Today, Tatyana Ivanovna’s creative portfolio contains about forty paintings, and she has become a loyal assistant and friend of Alexey Andreyevich.

Alexey Petrenko. "Portrait of teacher Tatyana Ivanovna Zakharchenkо". 2014 г.

As for the teaching method itself, I don’t discourage children from drawing endless balls, cubes and cylinders. I put on a complex still life in front of them right away, sit down beside each child, as Mikhail Alekseevich Ryasnyansky used to sit beside us, the students, and explain how to draw a jug or an apple correctly. If necessary, I can sit next to one child for an hour or even three that the class lasts.

The fact that Petrenko has correct approach to teaching was confirmed by the exhibitions of the studio students’ works. There were ten such exhibitions during the first seven years. The first reporting exhibition opened in Markhalevka seven months after the studio began work, and seven months later, the paintings of Lyudmila Kravtsova, Victoria Gaidaenko, Tatyana Zakharchenko and Alexey Petrenko himself were exhibited at the Ukraine Palace (Kiev).

At the beginning of 2018, the studio held a total of seven reporting exhibitions in Markhalevka and one in the regional department of culture, and also presented the work of the students at the festival “Katerina’s Song” in 2013. The works of L. Kravtsova, O. Sauliak, M. Gerasimov, E. Zakharchenko, V. Sedinkina, I. Frolov, V. Petrenko, V. Gaidaenko, and T. Zakharchenko were presented in Bogdanovka.