VALER BONDAR: PAINTING ON GLASS, CREATIVE METHOD, TECHNIQUE, MATERIALS, RESTORATION

Abstract

The article is devoted to the painting on glass by the Ukrainian nonconformist artist Valer Bondar (Kharkiv). The artist worked actively in 1980–2000 at the turn of the epochs, had a clear public position (he was engaged in public activities), fought for the independence of Ukraine, which was the source of his inspiration. V. Bondar was one of the faces of Ukrainian Kharkiv, influenced the new generation of Kharkiv poets and artists. The artist chose painting on glass as his main painting technique, considering it one of the markers associated with Ukrainian culture. V. Bondar deliberately abandoned the language of the Ukrainian folk icon, developing his own synthetic language, which, along with the characteristic expressive author’s drawing, had references to the Ukrainian Baroque and avant-garde of the first third of the twentieth century. The construction of the paint layer generally coincided with the “glass icon”, where the base – glass – was in front, and the paint layer was built on the contrary in comparison with the classical painting. Due to the inability to use professional art materials (especially at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s), he worked with water-based paints of various types (gouache, tempera, and later acrylic) and their mixtures. Anticipating possible problems with the adhesion of the paint layer to the glass, the artist sometimes “protected” the back of the paintings with varnish or paper. The author of the article studied the works of V. Bondar (collection of the Kharkiv Literary Museum, private collections of Kharkiv). Most of the paintings have peeling or delamination of the paint layer, loss of the paint layer due to the use of inappropriate restoration materials and mechanical impact. As a result of the experiments, an original method of conservation and restoration of Bondar’s paintings was developed. The proposed methodology has given satisfactory results and can be used in the restoration of other works by the artist.