Ivan Akhremchyk was educated at the Higher Art and Technical Studios (VKHUTEMAS) in Moscow. He studied under famous artists Abram Arkhipov, Konstantin Istomin, Aleksandr Shevchenko, and returned to Belarus upon graduation (1930). Ivan Akhremchyk began teaching in 1931, and worked in this capacity throughout his life. Over the years, he taught at the Vitebsk and Minsk art schools (the latter is now the Aliaksei Glebau Minsk State Art College), at the Polytechnic University (1953–1963) (now the Belarusian National Technical University), and then at the Theatre and Art Institute (1963–1971) (now the Belarusian State Academy of Arts).
The artist worked in oil in many genres of easel painting: portrait, landscape, still life, large-format historical painting, and monumental painting as well. Ivan Akhremchyk is the author of one of the most well-known and significant works on the military theme, “Defenders of the Brest Fortress” (1957), which is a part of the museum’s permanent exhibition.
Ivan Akhremchyk’s favourite genres throughout his career were portrait and landscape painting. His portraits are known for the masterful rendering of the state of mind of the sitters, their personalities. His landscapes present the lyrical beauty of Belarusian nature: the purity of colour, the precise reflection of tonal nuances of forests and parks, fields and rivers. The artist’s palette is conceptually complex, composed of many gradations, revealing the beauty in the ordinary. Akhremchyk’s 1959 trip to Mongolia inspired an important part of the artist’s oeuvre, a cycle of Mongolian landscapes reflecting the beauty of the steppes and the desert.
The exhibition presents works from the funds of the National Art Museum, as well as various materials and photographs from the Belarusian State Archive-Museum of Literature and Art.
The exhibition will run until January 21, 2024.
Exhibition curator: Palina Garashchenya, junior researcher at the Scientific and Fund Department of the National Museum of the Republic of Belarus.
