Oleg Golosy is the legendary painter of the «southern new wave» of the turn of the 1980’s-1990’s, the «soul» of the same called squat of the artist «Paris Commune» in Kiev (1990-1994). The work «Painting» refers to the «literary» cycle by Golosiy, over which he worked in 1991. Golosiy read a lot, loved Anton Chekhov, Sergey Yesenin, and Rainer Maria Rilke, the impressions that were accumulated over the years poured into canvases. There are only four works of the same type as the presented «Painting», reminiscent of a family album. Golosiy does not reproduce any images literally, they are archetypal and familiar to any resident of the post-Soviet space, brought up in Russian literature and 19th century paintings. In the centre of the «Painting», as in a window on a grey wall, we see the seascape and the white colonnade, the young man and the girl in bathing suits. Golosiy often used to create a painting inside a painting, placing more subtle meanings at the edges of the canvas. Here Golosiy combines the idyllic, quite modern plot with portraits of «Chekhov» or «Turgenev» girls appearing on a gray background. Their naive images, full of noble simplicity, become symbols of pure youthful love. The painting resembles a dream filled with feelings, deeply lyrical. Burning matches strengthen and complete the range of impressions – a simple but capacious sign: the memory of the first meeting, when a request to light up a cigarette was the pretext for acquaintance, and the fire of love broke out with the lighted match. But this is also thinking about the transience of being – everything burns very quickly in the stream of time. V