Zenoviy Ketsalo’s Prayer for Ukraine
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People’s Artist of Ukraine Zenoviy Ketsalo rises at eight o’clock every morning and exercises intensively, “twisting every which way,” as he says. After that he takes a cold shower and rubs himself vigorously with a rough towel. Then he gets dressed and combs his hair (now he takes his time), preparing himself for the most important part of his day: offering up a prayer.
He recites the Our Father, Hail Mary, and a prayer for Mother Ukraine: “Our Father, Mother of God, help us build an independent Ukraine, do not permit any bloodshed in our land but bestow upon us peace, accord, well-being, and love shared by all the people in the world!”
I wouldn’t believe anyone who says he follows the same strict procedure every day, but I believed Zenoviy Ketsalo. He is 86 and at this age people don’t lie or change their rules, or sell their souls, because they know they will meet their Maker very soon. Physically he is still strong, can take care of himself, and every autumn he submits new works to an exhibit in Lviv. Last time he strolled through the halls for a long time, studying every picture, then left. He was disappointed because “there wasn’t much to feast your eyes on.” Was it because the participating artists had nothing worthwhile to offer or because the selection was inadequate?
He loves young talent that is daring and independent, but which does not stand aloof from creative principles. He acts the way he was taught.
When he heard that Zenoviy wanted to be a painter, his father looked surprised: “Are you going to paint fences?” He wanted his son to become a priest and did his best to give him a good education. He had sent him to the private Grodger Gymnasium and didn’t make him work hard at home. But now he fired the woman who helped out in the family’s kitchen garden and stables, telling Zenoviy the job was his now. He hoped that this would clear the boy’s head, but even if it didn’t, he would earn enough in six months to pay for his painting lessons.
“On my way to Lviv I didn’t even know what kind of entrance exams I would have to take,” admits Zenoviy Ketsalo, “but I took them and passed, and was enrolled in the Art College’s Department of Applied and Artistic Crafts.” Instruction was in Polish and the curriculum was comprehensive: the history of art, history of styles, chemistry, materials chemistry, anatomy, and courses in many other disciplines. Every day I traveled seventy kilometers from Khodoriv to Lviv by train, never missing classes. The students and teaching staff kept their distance from one another. It’s not that we didn’t trust them; we listened to their opinion without too much criticism. But they were real professors, with vast knowledge, never uttering a rude word, and always wearing clean shirts with bow or knotted ties. And they were all eager to share their knowledge with us. At the time college teachers were individuals who were recognized by society.”
Zenoviy Ketsalo proceeds to list their names, describing each and every one. I’m not taking notes, I’m just sitting there, gawking at a man twice my age and telling myself I can’t remember all of my teachers. To conceal my embarrassment, I sip my tea and gaze at what looks like a huge and cold studio.
Ketsalo notices that I’m cold, gives me a cunning smile and produces a small bottle. I examine the label; it looks factory- made. Then it’s my turn to smile. It depicts an attractive lady offering a glass. The legend underneath reads: “Ketsalivka, the Real Vodka!”
Mr. Ketsalo fills two glasses the size of a peanut, lifts his, and takes an appreciative sip. Indeed, old men from Halychyna know their measure. They drink only to create a friendly atmosphere. They make strong and thick coffee and serve it in tiny cups. They are always the first to say hello, they sport berets and know how to joke without hurting anyone’s feelings. They savor every moment in life. Zenoviy Ketsalo is one of these men, perhaps even the last of the Mohicans.
THE FIRST TOAST TO YOUTHFUL DREAMS
During Zenoviy’s first vacations as a student, Ketsalo, Sr., told him to paint the walls of their new home. The result pleased him; Zenoviy knew how to work a brush. Yet he recognized his son’s talent only in his second year of college, when he helped the artist Jan Henryk Rozan decorate a Roman Catholic cathedral in Krostsenko Nyzhniy. On that particular occasion several students were selected and accommodated on the parish premises, with full lodging and board. They were also each given one zloty per day (at the time a cow cost 15 zlotys). Their task was to prepare canvases for painting, and to paint and gild ornaments.
Prior to that, Mr. Rozan had decorated a chapel in Rome. He would come to the cathedral clad in a white robe, sporting a bowtie. He painted in tempera prepared from flower pollen imported from Italy. The artist lived in Count Potocki’s mansion, which meant that he was held in esteem.
Ketsalo, Jr. managed to earn enough during the summer to replace his wardrobe, so he returned home one day looking like a dandy. “Just look at him! Only yesterday he was a piglet.” There was more pride than mockery in his father’s welcoming remark. As a railroad worker, he was entitled to pay less for his son’s tuition, but he was happy that Zenoviy was getting on his feet.
Almost his entire third year in school was spent painting nude models, almost life size, and painting portraits and still lifes. Classes continued after lunch, not like today when students rush out of school after three p.m. He had practically no time for dating and had to make do with waving from his windows to girls parading past; girls and boys on their way to work or study in Lviv would even have to board separate train cars. Those were the rules then and no one complained.
After completing his third year, he accompanied Kovzhun, a well-known painter, to decorate a church in the village of Yezupol. Now he was paid 3-4 zlotys a day and allowed to do more complicated painting. This filled him with inspiration and spurred his enthusiasm. If he didn’t know something, he rushed to learn it.
After graduation, he decided to enroll in the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts. Life was a long and exciting road leading to creative summits.
There were only two Ukrainians at the Krakow Academy: Ketsalo and Hlova. The young Ukrainians who were studying at other institutions of higher learning in Krakow formed a student community, and took part in cultural events, organizing lectures, seminars, and throwing parties. Among the residents of Krakow were Bohdan Lepky and the Kubiyovych brothers, and together they constituted a respectable intellectual society.
During his vacations Zenoviy single- handedly decorated a church in Kuty, but couldn’t finish the job. The year was 1939 and first the Soviets came and then WW II broke out.
“The war was on and I kept decorating the church, as though I could see nothing else around me.”
His brother came and said he had to return home, but Zenoviy said, “I have to finish this job.”
“You must come with me, our mother’s dying.” Fate had struck its first blow.
THE SECOND TOAST IS TO COURAGE IN LIFE, TO THE HUMAN IN EVERY INDIVIDUAL
Their mother was buried and they had to go on living. Zenoviy was offered a job teaching drawing in Ukrainian, Polish, and Jewish schools. But he wanted to continue his studies and enrolled in the Kharkiv Institute of Art. Gaining admission was no problem, not with his training and experience, or so it seemed.
He was drafted into the Soviet army. Initially, he served in Kharkiv, but after June 22, 1941 [when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union], he and a thousand young fellows from western Ukraine were interned in Bila Tserkva for three days without food, and then assigned to a labor battalion. They were packed in boxcars and sent to the Ural Mountains. They disembarked at a small station and were ordered to make dugouts. They were supposed to build a magnesium plant. The worst thing was homesickness. Zenoviy longed to see his father, sister, and brothers, who were living in Nazi-occupied territory. How were the Germans treating them? There seemed no end to the war.
He made no secret of his feelings and was arrested on charges formulated as follows: “Born in the west of Ukraine. Did not trust the news releases of the Soviet Information Bureau, slandered the Soviet collective farming system. Twice attempted to cross over to the enemy (siding with the enemy was physically impossible, not in the Ural Mountains in 1943 — Auth.) and called for the creation of an independent Ukraine.”
Nine months of investigation passed before Ketsalo signed the indictment. During that time he was interrogated by different investigating officers, each of whom told him, “You can only stay alive in a prison camp. There’s no alternative. We’ll take you outside at night and shoot you like a mad dog.” They would wake him during the night and take him to the interrogation room. True, they did not physically abuse him. Finally, when his body was swollen from hunger and he could hardly walk, he signed all the papers they gave him and managed to stay alive.
He was sentenced to eight years and stripped of his citizenship. But he was only sent to the prison camp a month and a half later because he had to paint some stupid pictures for the investigating authorities: rugs with swans in a pond, teddy bears, fairy tale landscapes. But he was well fed and even brought to the local KGB chief Rudchenko’s residence to give his daughter drawing lessons. Once the KGB officer summoned him to the kitchen and gave him a glass of vodka: “Drink this, but don’t tell anybody.” After that visit he was sent to the prison camp; someone must have reported on the KGB man’s magnanimous gesture.
He spent all his years in prison camps painting. He was the only artist in an area comprising three camps. His talent was his guardian angel. He would take a paintbrush or pencil and forget all about the camp and the convicts’ malicious grins. In fact, he cut paper into playing cards but refused to paint the suits. “This would place me at a different level of relationships. I didn’t want that. I kept telling myself I couldn’t walk out of prison with a dirtier soul; I had to be different, but not worse.” Among the political prisoners were quite a few intellectuals and scholars. It was an environment that encouraged communication.
He heard a pop song stylized as a prison ballad with this line, “God has departed from all the jails.”
“That’s not true!” he says, “I survived all that only because He was with me and supported me. Otherwise I would never have made it.”
THE THIRD TOAST IS TO WOMEN
After spending eleven years far away from home, on his return home he stopped in Moscow, where he spent three days exploring the Tretyakov Gallery. He remembers standing in front of canvases created by the great masters, but he doesn’t remember what filled his heart, grief or happiness.
He was 33, at an age when a man is supposed to have achieved a degree of success and stability, when his soul is mature and has something with which to keep ascending the ladder. What did he have? An official paper stating that he was an ex-con with a long record. Wasted years, wrecked hopes. Yet he felt more energy than despair. When he looked in the mirror, he saw a giant who wanted to paint the best pictures in the world. He was a very handsome man who had never known a woman and had so much love to share, a man who had survived many ordeals, and who cherished a desire to be free and do what he felt in his heart he had to do.
Naturally, after he was reunited with his family, they wanted to do what they thought was best for him: find him a pretty girl who would make a good wife. His sister arranged for a party at her friend’s. Everything was done nicely and respectably, in the best Galician tradition. The hostess looked very attractive and the table was nicely laid.
“But when I walked out of the house I told myself I’d never set foot there again. It wasn’t my home. I had to build it with my own hands. That’s what my wife and I eventually did. She even quit her job in Lviv and moved to Khodoriv where I worked for some time. Then we were given an apartment in Lviv; then our children were born. I often went on business trips and she’d never ask me afterwards whom I’d met or if there were women on our team of artists. Instead, she always asked what pictures I had painted. I was very grateful for that. Once I was in America and called home. My wife said, “Well, if you feel so happy there and you want to stay, I won’t complain.” After that I boarded a flight home. I told myself that if we had stayed together when were young and supported each other in difficult moments, I couldn’t betray her loyalty now that my hair was gray. She is dead now and all I have is fond memories and my obligation to complete what we planned together.”
“What plans?”
“I’m leafing through the book of my life, asking myself if I was right to refuse teaching jobs. At the time all I wanted was my pencils, brushes, paints, and communicating with my works. That’s probably why I painted so many pictures. I was so eager to live and enjoy my life after all those years behind barbed wire; I wanted to follow my dreams. You have to remember one thing: every success, every rung up the ladder is the result of hard work and wise plans realized. I always know what I am going to be doing tomorrow or a week from today. If the Lord grants me several more years, I’ll complete a museum exposition that I’m planning to hold in my own studio. There is the governor’s decision, although nothing has been actually done; I don’t even have a telephone. And I have a diversified collection of paintings, about a thousand in all (and to think of all the canvases scattered throughout the world, which I gave away as presents). I have 180 sketches of national costumes. I spent four years visiting villages. I didn’t want to miss anything, so our heirs will know their roots and which way to go. I expect an album with pictures of women’s national garb to appear in print soon.
“There is another painful problem. I headed a graphics division for twenty-five years and put together a good graphics studio. I collected 520 lithographic stones. They are priceless! I’d wheel them in a barrow from all sorts of places and never parted with a single one, although people would come from Moscow time and again, asking me to sell some. And now the premises are being used for some kind of business. What can I say?
“Also, changes must be made in our country, a lot of things must be put right, so we don’t feel ashamed before the younger generation and all those young people who died in prison camps, convicted because they ‘spread propaganda about Ukrainian independence.’ So many years have elapsed, but I still ask myself what kind of Ukraine we have. The time to ask questions is past. It’s time to start building things. So I pray for my Ukraine every day, because I hope that He hears me the way I hear people’s voices on the street.”
¹34, â³âòîðîê, 7 ãðóäíÿ 2004