The Reflections About Mykhailo Guida's Aesthetic Conceptions

Mykhailo Guida is one of the greatest oil painting masters in Ukraine. He not only holds a prestigious status in Ukraine, but also plays an important role in the modern oil painting field in Europe and America. In China, especially, his works build a bridge which closely connect to China and Ukraine. Mykhailo Guida's works reveal an extremely strong impressionistic meaning, with a unique painting technique expressing his attitude towards the world. He was an artist who lived in a profound reforming country. His solid foundational training by realism in the early Soviet society and his self-consciousness awakening because of the modern influence of impressionistic painting makes his works contain a unique artistic style of painting in Europe.The most important impact for Mykhailo Guida's later creation is his love of oriental aesthetics and culture. His painting has a breakthrough after constantly adding Oriental elements, such as Japanese Ukiyo-e and Chinese ink wash painting techniques, and interspersedly applying different brightness of gray and high saturation of monochrome, so that the painting naturally reveals a quiet, gentle, elegant atmosphere. After living in China, he used a large amount of Chinese traditional Shan Shui painting techniques to express and display the pure beauty of people, landscape and customs in Jiangnan area. His paintings contain a beautiful interpretation of oriental aesthetic taste.Walking into Mykhailo Guida's art world, analyzing his works in different periods, summarizing the shape, texture, and other aesthetic features in his paintings, it can be clearly comprehended that behind the painter's accurate drawings of shape, there is not only the Western tradition and inheritance of painting, but also the rhythm of Oriental aesthetic style. The development and inheritance of impressionistic contemporary oil painting, as well as the exploration of Mykhailo Guida and other contemporary artists in impressionistic painting, laid a solid foundation for opening a new direction of aesthetic taste.