AMERICAN EURASIAN ART MUSEUM PRESENTS
POET OF NATURE
PART OF YURI YUROVSKY TRADITIONAL COLLECTION
Yuri Yurovsky belonged to the distinguished generation of Kievan and Soviet artists of the twentieth century. Renowned as a landscape painter and exceptional colorist, he was also a master of still life. Many regarded him as one of the finest colorists of his time. For Yurovsky, nature—Mother Earth herself—was his true calling and enduring muse.
A pivotal moment in his artistic formation came at the age of 17, when he studied under Kazimir Malevich.
Later, Yurovsky became a mentor and friend to artists such as Nikolai Glushchenko, Tatyana Yablonskaya, Semyon Guetsky, and Viktor Koshevoy. His body of work reveals a remarkable synthesis of classical training, avant-garde experimentation, and postwar émigré expression—qualities that make his art both historically and artistically significant.
From the 1930s through the 1990s, Yurovsky also cultivated an impressive art collection. Over several decades, he gathered drawings and paintings by his close friends and colleagues, building a museum-quality assemblage of twentieth-century Ukrainian and Russian art.
The Yurovsky Collection now comprises more than 900 works, including 248 landscapes and still lifes by Yurovsky himself, and over 600 original theatrical sketches by his remarkable contemporaries—artists such as Fedor Nirod, Tatiana Bruni, Anatoly Petritsky, and many others.
The celebrated artist Tatiana Bruni, a close friend of Yurovsky, once said:
Yuri amazed me with his exceptionally refined perception of the natural world. His autumns, his summers, his winters—each season—is infused with a sensitivity that reaches the depths of the soul and a profound understanding of nature. I love landscapes, and when I look at Yuri’s paintings, I feel revived. I see myself within the scene—I enter the painting, walking through it, dreaming, softly singing...”
Even as a student at the Kyiv Art Institute, Yurovsky’s talent stood out. Under the guidance of Professor Rakitsky, he developed the technical mastery that would define his legacy. Throughout his life, he remained deeply connected to both painting and collecting—particularly theatrical design for ballet and opera. His collection reflects the virtuosity of a generation that carried forward the traditions of Léon Bakst and Kazimir Malevich, bridging classical heritage with modern vision in a timeless and vital dialogue.
Personally connected to Kazimir Malevich, Yurovsky shared his mentor’s sensitivity to color, form, and the rhythmic poetry of nature. A true poet of the landscape, he lived among the great artists of his era and found constant inspiration in music, which echoed through every brushstroke of his art.
Echoes of a Master: Memories of Yuri Yurovsky”
As Recalled by His Son, Len Yurovsky
Yuri and Kazimir Malevich
From the Memories of Len Yurovsky
Kazimir Malevich was known to be strict with his students, yet deeply supportive of those he believed possessed the potential to become true Suprematists. He sought individuals with broad vision and vivid imagination—those who were spiritually and intellectually open—and welcomed them into his inner circle. Among those fortunate few was the young Yuri Yurovsky, just seventeen years old.
As my father later recalled, those encounters left an indelible mark, etched in memory for a lifetime. He often said that what the world knows about Malevich is only a drop in the ocean compared to what his students witnessed firsthand. In the intimacy of studio conversations, the extraordinary inner world of Malevich would slowly unfold.
“My friends and I,” my father once told me, “watched and listened to him the way Papuans might look at missionaries arriving from the jungle—stunned, reverent, full of awe. We were face to face with a mystery, with something sacred. And we were grateful that Malevich treated us as equals.”
I remember him describing one moment vividly:
“One day, he quoted Confucius. That was when we first fell in love with the world of signs and symbols. ‘It is they who rule the world!’ Malevich said. ‘I feel it happening—as if the pupils of my eyes are drawing in the entire universe!’
These words have stayed with me my entire life. They taught me that to truly see means more than simply observing what surrounds us—it means perceiving the invisible. And even now, I feel as if Kazimir Severinovich is always near—his voice still echoing from the depths of my youth.”
Yuri and the Kyiv Art Institute
From the Memories of Len Yurovsky
When my father spoke about his student years at the Kyiv Art Institute, his eyes would always light up. It was a time of passion, discovery, and camaraderie—an era when art was not only a discipline but a way of life. Under the guidance of Professor Rakitsky, Yuri learned to see painting as a living organism, where light, color, and rhythm breathed together.
He would often describe the studio as a place of both discipline and freedom. “Rakitsky taught us to build the structure of a painting as if it were architecture,” my father recalled. “But he also encouraged us to listen—to the silence of the canvas, to the whisper of the brush. That was when I first understood that painting was not only about depicting nature, but about hearing it.”
Those years in Kyiv were also the foundation of lifelong friendships—with artists who would go on to shape the visual culture of their generation. My father often mentioned evenings filled with debates about Cézanne, Repin, and the revolutionary spirit of the new art. “We lived as if the world depended on our next painting,” he used to say.
It was in those formative years that Yuri’s artistic philosophy took shape—a union of technical mastery and inner contemplation, of classical roots and modern freedom. The Kyiv Art Institute gave him not only a profession, but a spiritual foundation that would sustain him for decades.
“I realized then,” my father once told me, “that to paint is to participate in the mystery of creation itself. The brush is not just an instrument—it is a voice of the soul.”
Yuri and the Theatre Artists
From the Memories of Len Yurovsky
The world of theatre held a special place in my father’s heart. He often said that the stage was the most alive of all canvases—where color, form, music, and movement became one. His friendships with the great theatre artists of his generation—Fedor Nirod, Tatiana Bruni, Anatoly Petritsky, and many others—were built on mutual admiration and shared devotion to beauty.
He met many of them in Kyiv and Leningrad, in studios filled with sketches for ballets and operas. “Their rooms,” he once told me, “were overflowing with drawings—characters, costumes, dream worlds waiting to be born. I could spend hours watching them work. Every line was alive.”
From these friendships grew not only creative inspiration but also one of the most remarkable private collections of theatrical art. Over decades, Yuri gathered more than 600 original stage designs, preserving an entire generation’s vision of the theatre. Each sketch, he believed, was a window into an artist’s soul—a fragment of a performance that once shimmered on stage and then vanished into memory.
“Theatre is the most fragile of the arts,” my father used to say. “It lives for a moment—and then it’s gone. But in these drawings, the moment remains. The music, the gesture, the breath of the dancer—they are all still there, waiting to be seen again.”
He admired how his friends carried forward the legacy of Léon Bakst and Malevich, merging classical elegance with modern daring. Their art, like his own, sought harmony between the seen and the unseen, between matter and spirit.
“I collected their works,” he once told me, “not as a collector, but as a witness—to preserve the beauty that might otherwise be lost.”
