Iwan Trusz "Neapolitan Landscape"
Description
Oil on cardboard, signed lower left “Iw. Trusz”.
Framed: 48x58 cm (33x43 cm)
Ivan Ivanovych Trush (1869 - 1941) was a Ukrainian impressionist painter, a master of landscape and portraiture, an art critic, and active community patron of arts in Galicia or Halychyna – a historical region in western Ukraine. His studies were undertaken between 1891 and 1897 at the Kraków Academy of Art under Jan Stanisławski and Leon Wyczółkowski. Trush also studied in Vienna (1894) and in Munich (1897). Starting from 1898, Trush lived and worked in Lviv where he became acquainted with Ivan Franko, a poet and writer. In 1899, his first art exhibit was presented to the public in Lviv. It was at this time that Trush became involved with the Shevchenko Scientific Society, for which he completed "a number of works of art, primarily portraits". Trush's travels took him to Italy, Egypt, and Palestine. When back at home, Trush founded and organized the first professional art societies in Galicia, the Society for the Development of Rus' Art (1898), the Society of Friends of Ukrainian Art (1905) and its first exhibition of Ukrainian artists, which drew participation from Kyiv-based artists. The painter's activism, vast and dynamic creative output, numbered over 6,000 works, inspired a rebirth of painting in Galicia.