Yevhen Mykytovych Lysyk, Solomiya Krushelnytska Lviv Opera and Ballet Theatre chief artist, Shevchenko Award laureate, passed away 26 years ago. He passed away very soon – at the age of 60... A lot of things were said and written about this prominent figure while he still lived and after his death. His life and creative work are featured in almost 300 newspaper and magazine articles, 20 books, encyclopedias, collections, booklets, albums and in several theses. And finally, the first monograph «Y.M. Lysyk’s creative work in time, space, theatre design and architecture» has come out.
This is a collective work of Professor Viktor Proskuryakov, Doctor of Architecture, Head of the Department of Architectural Environment Design of the Institute of Architecture of Lviv Polytechnic, Zoryana Klymko, assistant lecturer at the Department of Design and Architecture Fundamentals, and Oksana Zinchenko, Distinguished Artist of Ukraine from Solomiya Krushelnytska Lviv National Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre.
In the foreword, the authors expressed sincere gratitude to O.K. Lysyk-Zinchenko, the prominent theatre designer’s widow and a famous theatre designer, who not only helped them get and process unique materials, which depict theatrical objects and spaces created by Yevhen Lysyk, form her personal archive, but also worked fruitfully as part of the team of authors. Because of her illness, she was not able to participate in the presentation, but her daughter, Anna, was there. Among the guests of honor, there were Tadey Ryndzak, chief artist of Lviv Opera House, and his brother Mykhaylo, theatre designer.
The publication was reviewed by Professor Bohdan Cherkes, Doctor of Architecture, Pavlo Bosyy, professor of the School of Applied Arts of E. Ryerson University (Toronto, Canada), Professor Oleksandr Lesyk, Doctor of Architecture, Head of the Department of Fine Arts of Lesya Ukrainka Eastern European National University.
Professor Bohdan Cherkes gave a speech. He underlined that this work is, first and foremost, an academic understanding of Yevhen Lysyk’s creative work. Such book could appear due to not only profound knowledge about the prominent theatre designer, whose creative work has been studied by Viktor Proskuryakov for many years, but also due to incredible adoration of this unique personality, which is in the heart and soul of the researcher. The speaker also mentioned the contribution of other authors into this monograph. Zoryana Klymko is approaching the defence of her thesis on the topic «The principles of Y.M. Lysyk’s architectural and theatrical creative work and their development in modern Ukraine».
Viktor Proskuryakov presented almost 30 copies of the book with an autograph to each and everyone of his colleagues and friends, who helped him in publishing this monograph. He received a present from Bohdan Cherkes, a book about a prominent Jewish painter Frederick Kiesler, who was born in Chernivtsi and who did a lot to popularize Ukrainian art in the USA. This artist created a temple to store manuscripts found near the Dead Sea.
I am not an expert of arts but I will quote one paragraph, which, in my humble opinion, is the quintessence of the monograph, «Modern theatre designer not only fills and decorates the space of the stage, like artists did it in the period of Classicism and Baroque. They just painted the curtains, or made the space of the stage close the space in real life according to the methods of naturalistic theatre artists. No, he/she creates a performance on the verge of artistic and technical objectives, aesthetic likes and philosophical teaching, he/she becomes a co-author of the staging of the play. It calls not only for special education, but also for defining the authorship in the performance, which is adequate to the authorship of the playwright, composer, director, architect…». All this is about theatre designer Yevhen Lysyk.
And Viktor Proskuryakov said about Yevhen Lysyk the following, «He is a Michelangelo of theatre design...». It may sound too strong. However, the researcher has a right to perceive the creative work of a real genius of theatre design in this way.
This book contains some more sentences, which made me ask Professor Proskuryakov once again, whether famous people really said such things about Yevhen Lysyk. There are words of Aram Khachatiryan, a genius composer, who supposedly said that he could rewrite his music to «Spartak» ballet for Lysyk’s theatre design. These words were really said. Obviously it was an imagery, emotional evaluation of Lysyk’s creative work. Viktor Proskuryakov remembered the words of his friend artist, Valeriy Bortyakov. Director Paradzhanov once said to him, «There appeared a mother in Ukraine that gave birth to the genius Lysyk...».
We can find out from the monograph that during the years of his work, Yevhen Lysyk created acting environments in 85 performances (he prepared 5–6 performances a year). The most famous include «Romeo and Juliette», «The legend about love», «Golden hoop», «Othello», «Giaconda», «Don Juan», «Boris Godunov», «The Nutcracker», «Viy», «Medea», «Creation of the world», etc.
The book contains a table with the list of countries and cities, where performances with Yevhen Lysyk’s design were staged: Lviv, Drohobych, Donetsk, Odesa, Kyiv, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Chelyabinsk, Yekaterinburg, Krasnoyarsk, Warsaw, Sofia, Skopje, Kishinev, Minsk, Ankara...
There is also a chronological review of entertainment buildings from the Middle Ages until nowadays for those interested in the history of theatre arts in Lviv. In 1787–1799, in Lviv with its population of 40,000 people, there were 1850 seats in stationary entertainment buildings and 4500 seats in summer amphitheatres and stages. There were 22 citizens of Lviv for one seat in an entertainment building. Even during the years of German Occupation, ballet, opera and drama performances were staged in Lviv and there was also a theatre of small forms «Joyful Lviv».
The professional path of Yevhen Lysyk had not always been a bed of roses. He had to fight the criticism of worthless officials who saw manifestations of formalism, abstractionism or even political motives in his sets. Do those cowardly people regret what they did?
Viktor Proskuryakov has been trying together with students of architecture to create a museum, to be more precise, a Home of Yevhen Lysyk, in Lviv in order to preserve his genius heritage. He has developed several suggestions. However, everything is hindered by the indifference of managers that work in the field of culture and the lack of money. Once, Viktor Yushchenko, President of Ukraine, promised to allot money for this cause. He forgot about his promise… However, Viktor Proskuryakov believes that the Home of Yevhen Lysyk will appear in Lviv some day…
