In the history of Ukrainian graphic art, there exists a singular instance where the mention of the artist’s surname necessitates the inclusion of his first name: Heorhiy Yakutovych, the father, and Serhiy Yakutovych, the son. This unique family, into which Serhiy was born and raised, was profoundly entwined with visual art, with even their closest circle of friends being predominantly artists. The influence on Serhiy extended beyond the special atmosphere of his home and a childhood replete with artistic impressions. His earliest drawings were so remarkable that they convinced his father of his innate genius for drawing.
During his teenage years, Serhiy took part in the filming of the historical movie “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” directed by Sergei Parajanov. This experience, coupled with personal friendships with many prominent actors, instilled in him a sense of the duality of his talent. Serhiy was a visionary who, in his graphic compositions, created images that included literary ones, as if he were projecting frames from the films of Ukraine’s past.
This is especially true for the era of Ivan Mazepa, a late 17th-century Ukrainian political leader and Hetman. For Serhiy, Mazepa’s time became an “unfinished project” he worked on for decades, continually adding new elements, plots, themes, and ways of depicting this lost legacy. Serhiy seemed to compete with fate, waging an unannounced war to restore, through his drawings, the essence of an era when Hetman Mazepa strove to make Ukraine an independent European state.
In the 1990s, when Ukraine regained its independence, Serhiy, now a mature forty-year-old artist, accepted a long-term artistic residency in Barcelona. He used this opportunity to visit Spanish museums and develop a new perspective on blending Ukrainian and European art. He sought to find a visual equivalent for depicting events and characters from Ukrainian history in a style that aligned with the visual culture of renowned European Baroque artists like Velázquez, Rubens, and Van Dyck. Essentially, he aimed to contribute to creating a modern Ukrainian “Baroque myth.”
In 1994, the graphic artist created the monumental composition “Hetmans of Ukraine,” where he added a stylised coat of arms to each realistic waist-length or bust portrait. By 2000, he completed a series of drawings titled “Coats of Arms of Ukrainian Cities.” These drawings surrounded the official coats of arms with historical figures, architectural buildings, numismatic artifacts, and enriched them with ornaments from handwritten books to motifs of 19th-century weaving and embroidery. The dynamic compositions featured literary heroes, celestial warriors, and winged putti. This allegorical-symbolic network was unified by Baroque cartouches and the idea of passing through a triumphal arch, making the entire cycle resemble a giant “gate” to an invisible altar.
Serhiy Yakutovych reinterpreted the much-discussed concept of unity through a splendid iconostasis, where the depictions of banners, cannons, swords, sabres, spears, and shields became organic. Under Yakutovych’s hand, the triumph of military glory symbolised our unity. Different styles and eras merged seamlessly, all reflecting the enduring spirit of Ukrainian chivalry.
Heorhiy and Serhiy Yakutovych both worked as film artists and after each project, they continued to create illustrations for special book editions that diverged from cinematic interpretations. Heorhiy illustrated Ukrainian writer Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors novel in 1967, while Serhiy contributed to Mazepiana in 2005 and Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka and Myrgorod by Mykola Gogol in 2009.
The portrayal of another Ukrainian Hetman, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, as well as Mazepa in Serhiy Yakutovych’s film projects (“A Prayer for Hetman Mazepa” by Yuriy Illienko, 2000-02, and “Taras Bulba” by Volodymyr Bortko, 2005-07), posed significantly greater challenges compared to his earlier works. In the graphic artist’s renditions, though not on the cinema screen, these figures transformed into canonical representations of the nation’s founding figures. In Serhiy Yakutovych’s interpretation, Hetman Ivan Mazepa appeared notably younger, embodying a mature yet appealing hero whose portrayal reflects influences from Byron, Hugo, Słowacki, Shevchenko, and Brecht.
Yakutovych, in addition to creating the costumes for the main characters, developed an entire world of the Zaporizhian Sich for the film adaptation of Mykola Gogol’s novella. He reconstructed it based on mentions in the story, which, even during the time it was written, had already vanished. But not for Yakutovych.
The character of Taras Bulba, central to Mykola Gogol’s novel of the same name, possessed a well-established iconography rooted in canonical Soviet-Russian art. Aware that Bohdan Stupka would portray the role in the film, Serhiy Yakutovych, familiar with Stupka both on stage and in familial settings, confidently blended the actor’s features with a portrayal diverging significantly from his actual appearance.
In Yakutovych’s sketches, Taras Bulba emerged not as a robust Cossack in baggy trousers but as a robust and affluent figure clad in full knightly armour. Instead of a despotic father and patricidal figure, Yakutovych depicted him as a symbol of the formidable strength of the Cossack elite.
The portrayal of nobility as the foundation for other characters in this adaptation of Gogol’s text lacked the requisite material expression. The costume designs for French musketeers, German counts, and Polish noblewomen similarly fell short. Serhiy Yakutovych’s polyphonic vision of the hetman’s capital, estates, and rural homesteads, meticulously imagined as a prosperous European country ravaged by war, remained unrealized. Yakutovych withdrew most of his graphic designs, decoration sketches, and storyboards from the film production, convinced that his interpretation of Gogol’s text was more supportive of Ukrainian identity than the version captured by Russian filmmakers.
Yakutovych crafted a perspective on the Cossack era that challenged those who did not acknowledge Ukrainian culture as integral to European heritage. Through his collective works, he dignified the Cossack and Hetman epochs, depicting them as realms of dignity and beauty where people, even amidst tragedy, retained their spirit. His illustrations for Lina Kostenko’s poem Berestechko (2010) offered another canvas for Yakutovych to portray tragedy as opportunity and feminine beauty as unexpected salvation.
Despite setbacks in his film projects, Serhiy Yakutovych persisted in exploring historical themes. In the 2010s, he ventured into creating sketches of Ukrainian soldiers’ uniforms, drawing inspiration from Heorhiy Narbut’s designs for the Ukrainian People’s Republic army. These works represent a blend of artistic expression and practical design.
Despite enduring profound family losses, Serhiy Yakutovych remained a stalwart figure in the realm of graphic art until the end of his life. Driven by a deep fascination with Baroque stylistic elements, he navigated through themes of Eros and Thanatos, war and love, violence and passion, nudity and the opulence of attire without trepidation. He found allure in vanitas vanitatum, with its motifs of flowers, skulls, coats of arms, blades, and the interplay of light on glass. This affinity enabled him to envision and depict the transient and the obliterated, materialising them with the full force of his exceptional talent.
