PANDEMIC PIETAS

 

I found two Pieta’s that have recently been painted due to the on-going Pandemic.

Helen Lavelle of Scranton, PA had her painting, "Pandemic Pieta," displayed  in an art exhibition through the M.A.D.S. Art Gallery in Milan, Italy last November. This striking piece represents mothers across our world today who have lost children through violence, especially in the Ukraine.

The inspiration for this particular piece began to take form around the time that the COVID-19 death toll hit 25,000 in the United States.

The artist explains:

As I was painting, the number of lives lost continued to exponentially rise. Today over 761,000 Americans are dead with over 5.1 million fatalities worldwide. The focus of this painting is not the life lost, but the mother who is battered with unbearable grief, unspeakably traumatized. She is in the eye of the storm, her face acknowledging her reality and ours. Her hand reaches out over her dead son’s body. She is not hysterical. She is feeling her feelings. She is fully present. She reaches out in her most vulnerable state so that we may reach in.

Oleksii Gnievyshev is an emerging Ukrainian painter whose work has already received international exposure. He is a graduate of the Art Academy in Kiev. Today Oleksii lives and works outside of Cologne- his wife being from Germany. His oil on canvas paintings combine classical realism with modernity using a bright, engaging color pallet. His subjects vary from figurative nudes to hyper-realistic still lifes.

Born into a family of architects, Oleksii was always surrounded by creativity. He painted his first oil painting on cardboard at the age of nine. It was a landscape inspired by the works of English Romanticism.

 

Oleksii combines classical realism with modernity in his oil paintings on canvas. He takes up themes of Greek mythology, as well as the interplay of human nature and animalism. He is inspired by the power and energy hidden in humans, animals and plants. The artist tries to transfer this power onto the canvas with lines and dots. He does not want to display these themes impressively, but to give the viewer the feeling that this energy exists.

He has exhibited his works in numerous exhibitions, notably in Milan, Amsterdam, and Cologne.

Oleksii paints in his special, unique style. The artist also carries the Asian culture in his own interpretation on his canvas. The fascination for Japan doesn't just come from the general interest, but from the historical and family situation of the artist: Oleksii Gnievyshev's family has their roots in Japan.