Angel Artists: Konstantin Kalynovych (b. 1959)

September 22, 2024

Angel Artists: Konstantin Kalynovych (b. 1959)

My final "Angel Artist"in the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection is Russian-Ukrainian Printmaker Konstantin Kalynovych, best known for his exquisite book plates with borrowings from the works of Great Masters of Art like Bosch, Durer, and Rembrandt. Kalynovych describes these detailed pastiche pieces as “winter dreams,” where the meanings are “murky, like a dream on a foggy winter night.” He has developed his own cryptic iconography using traditional religious symbols. Angels make frequent appearances in his graphic works as celestial beings who easily cross the great divide between the natural and supernatural, as agents of judgment and mercy. They can be harbingers of the changing seasons like Angel of Summer or apocalyptic trumpeters like The Second Angel from the Book of Revelation. In other prints, an angel rows a boat through the sky to rescue a landlocked galleon, while another divine emissary keeps a campfire burning for beasts of the field and for lost wayfarers The artist sums up his book plate imagery in a predictably enigmatic way with a Bible verse from Ecclesiates: “That thing that has been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done, is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” (John kohan)