Gamlet Zinkivskyi, a city artist who is skilled in both shooting and painting, was eager to fight for his town as Russian troops began to impose rule over the Russians from Kharkiv’s borders in May 2022. But Zinkivskyi, who had frequented firing varies before the battle, joined a voluntary system defending the town. But the squadron’s chief had other ideas for him.
” Gamlet, just pull up your paint, and go paint in the street”, Vsevolod Kozhemiako, the chief of Khartiia battalion, recalled telling him. Because of his skill, “his power is much stronger than his ability to assault or defend trenches with a weapons.” His style might give capital defenders more freedom.
Although cautious, Zinkivskyi obliged and began painting in Kharkiv’s bombed-out and deserted roads, wearing a bulletproof vest where he tucked his equipment. On a wood panels covering a broken door at City Hall, one of his earliest works featured Molotov cocktails, a smile to the homemade weapons used by Kharkiv’s citizens to defend the country. ” Hellish hospitality”, he wrote on the mural.
Shortly, he said, men would stop and tell him,” Gamlet, we love your function- keep going”! He added,” That’s when I understood how many people needed it”. Zinkivskyi, 34, was inspired by the favorable response to paint lots more murals in eastern Ukrainian cities that depict the realities of war, from blood contributors to lines of people receiving foods.
Zinkivskyi was a child of a journalist mom and an engineer and designer dad. At college, he adopted the name Gamlet, the translation of Hamlet in Russian, because he often recited the show’s monologues.
With more than 100 of his paintings appearing on tower windows, doors and windowsills, Zinkivskyi’s job has become an integral part of the area.
He painted key sets with the phrase” The keys miss their doors” to depict the large-scale exodus from Kharkiv very early in the war. Another painting shows a soldier’s equipment- a hat, flak jacket and shotgun- which he called the “amulets of modernity”.
Certainly all his paintings have met with acceptance. One that made the conceit that soldiers ‘ sacrifices pale in comparison to civilians ‘ inflicted wounds caused a backlash online. Some even call his job depressing.
