Plowman

"Plowman" belongs to a series of folklore-themed gouache paintings. The work was first exhibited at the Ukrainian Plastics Exhibition, organized in Lviv in the fall of 1931 by the Association of Independent Ukrainian Artists (ANUM). M. Butovich represents a generalized image of a farmer in motion, surrounded by characteristic symbolic objects (sickle, sieve, sheaf, etc.). Thanks to the dynamic composition and the geometric interpretation of its elements in the conditional space, the artist at the same time imparts to the traditional for folk culture the image of the farmer with innovative features, creating a somewhat ironic poster image of the peasant while working.

Maria Cymbalista 
Head of Prints and Drawings department
From the collection of Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum in Lviv.