An exhibit of artist Yurii Shapoval has opened at Poltava’s Venerable Paisius Wieliczkowski Spiritual and Cultural Center. The artist’s works are kept at museums and private collections in Ukraine, Russia, Slovakia, Germany, Poland, Italy, France, Canada, the US, and other countries, although the author himself has never studied art. Shapoval is a self-taught artist. He liked drawing in his childhood, then what was just a hobby transformed into real enthusiasm. The artist says his father also had a gift for drawing, and he presumes that this prompted him to seriously go in for figurative art.
Shapoval has been painting more and more canvases for about seven years. The author made a name for himself during the Maidan, when he depicted a “revolutionary” Taras Shevchenko. Incidentally, the first picture visitors see entering the exhibition hall is the one that portrays an uncommon image of the Bard. The artist says he shows the Bard to a diences not only in Ukraine, but also outside it. “It is usually representatives of the Ukrainian diaspora who respond, not the original Europeans (some of them do not even know exactly where Ukraine is). Ukrainians, on their part, are taking very different views of this: some say I distort the great and holy image of Shevchenko, but the majority like it,” Shapoval says. Making this kind of pictures that portray Shevchenko, the author is trying to broach the topical problems of today’s society.
“What thrills me in art is freedom. The artist is a free person,” says the author, who tours Ukraine and the world, displaying his pictures at international indoor and outdoor exhibits. This is the first time Shapoval is staging a solo exhibit in his almost native city [born in Pryluky, Chernihiv oblast, the author resides permanently in Poltava. – Author], but he has managed to attract the attention of almost all the Poltava artists to it.
The exhibit displays the works the master has executed in the past three years. The canvases are done in diverse techniques and touch on various themes, of which the author himself says: “I’ve managed to unite the ununitable.” Olha Kurchakova, director of the Poltava Mykola Yaroshenko Art Museum (Gallery of Arts), comments: “If I were to choose a name for this exhibit, I would call it ‘A Path to Himself.’ The artist’s style is, above all, his emotions and mood. It is too early to say that Yurii Shapoval has distinguished himself in painting, but his way is extremely interesting.”
The exhibit will remain open until October 2, 2016. Admission is free.
