‘Documenting Landscapes: Ukraine’s Vanishing Terrain’ at the Amy Kaslow Gallery
Jaroslav Leonets' paintings serve to memorialize Ukraine as the young Kyiv-based artist had always known it.
Roughly a year prior to Russia’s invasion of his home country in February of 2022, Jaroslav Leonets set out with what became an increasingly urgent mission: to travel around Ukraine to sketch a number of the country’s iconic vistas as well as other stunning and bucolic aspects of its varied topography.
From dramatic cliffs to expansive fields and winding rivers, Leonets’s paintings in the series Documenting Landscapes: Ukraine’s Vanishing Terrain serve to memorialize the country as the young Kyiv-based artist had always known it — peaceful and free, joyful and beautiful. These are not depictions of today’s Ukraine — a scarred, desolate, bleak, war-torn land, ravaged after a full 15 months and counting of pillaging Russian invaders and prolonged fighting.
“I don’t understand this war, I don’t understand why to kill people and destroy the destinies of an entire generation,” Leonets says in a release announcing the series and its run as the premiere exhibition at the new, expanded Amy Kaslow Gallery in downtown Bethesda.
Leonets created his works at a time when paint, brushes, and linen were all in short supply in Ukraine. It became a long and torturous process just to ship to the gallery the nine works currently on display — a journey drawn out by virtue of having to pass through a no-fly zone into Poland and on to Washington by way of Warsaw. Accompanying the display are descriptions written by the artist of each work, all medium-sized oil on canvas paintings available at prices ranging from $3,500 to $6,400.
A former international photojournalist, Kaslow embarked on her new career as a gallerist three years ago, opening her namesake gallery in an intimate, tucked-away space in Upper Northwest. The new larger and more prominent digs in Bethesda give greater visibility to the gallery and its focus on celebrating the rich diversity of art from around the world.
To quote the gallery’s official description, the mission is “to show fine art that celebrates the natural world in content, form, and medium” and in a way that helps “promote the excellence of artists whose work commands elevation.”
As a complement to the current exhibition, the gallery will host “Dialogue: Ukraine’s War is Democracy’s War,” a discussion between Natalie Jaresko, Ukraine’s former minister of finance and current chair of the Aspen Institute Kyiv, and James Steinberg, a former deputy national security advisor in the Clinton Administration who is now dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and set for Friday, May 5, starting at 6 p.m.
Totaling 2,400 square feet, the new space allows the gallery to display more art and feature more artists at any given time. As a result, Leonets’s paintings are on display near examples of artworks from other regions of the world, much of it previously showcased by the gallery — such as the sumptuously colored, deeply detailed canvases from its last exhibition in the former space, Dreamings: Aboriginal Fine Art from Australia’s Central Desert.
Wooden sculptures by Renee Balfour, blown glass vessels by John Geci, lifelike portraits made with 3-D steel wire by Noah James Saunders, and rare wood piano-shaped tables by the gallerist’s late brother Andrew Kaslow are just some of the additional artworks scattered throughout the new space, inviting guests “to come explore these treasures and enter another world on Bethesda’s Norfolk Avenue.”
On display through May 7 at the Amy Kaslow Gallery, 7920 Norfolk Ave., Bethesda, Md. Visit www.amykaslowgallery.com.
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