Born in 1929 in Sokal’ area, Andriy in the age of 15 years old, after the loss of his
parents, who were killed by NKVD, he ran away to Zakerzonia. From there
through the operation Visla he got to Gdansk, where not only he got the art
degree but also became the leading artist.
The main topic of his works was tectonic movement of nations in search of
inhabitant land. The loss and gain of homeland. Mentukh used the stylization of
iconography for the becoming of his own style. In our days, the artist is still alive
and well and I would really want him to see my portrait.
On my painting there’s the same crowd which is so often portrayed by Mentukh,
the crowd which migrates, dissapears far away, its image fades like his identity.
Parents of my father were also migrants. They were forced by communists to
leave their houses, move to the land, unknown to them and driven to the
collective farm.
Nowadays a lot of our people are migrating because of the war. The part of them
will forever be left with the feeling of the loss of homeland, the other part will
dissolve into the flow of other migrants, and the part of people like Andriy
Mentukh will never lose their Ukrainian heritage wherever they’ll go.