Presentation of works by Mykhailo Deiak, Ukrainian expressionist will continue until October 24 in the art gallery Mystetska Zbirka. The exhibited canvases were created by the artist during his one and a half month trip around Europe (Venice, Paris, and Vienna).
“In my works I wanted to show and preserve the special style, spirit, and flavor of every European city where I stayed,” said Deiak to The Day.
Drawing European everyday life from nature, the artist reflects the unique spirit of a particular location, color of space, and his own feelings. All of his paintings are pierced with realistic and coloristic symbiosis. City embraced by starry night, sea berths, streets of European cities – every painting is breathing the dynamics of life and bright colors. In general, Deiak’s creative style, as styles of many other representatives of Transcarpathian School of Painting, is characterized by the play with bright colors: orange, yellow, red, blue, and green. By the way, the artist makes the paint himself.
The term Transcarpathian School of painting emerged in the 1950s, when Soviet art historians discovered a kind of artistic culture of the Carpathian region with clear local and temporal characteristics in the works of Albert Erdeli and Joseph Bokshay.
Transcarpathian artists in Soviet times were the boldest colorists. Most painters who belonged to this art school studied in Vienna, Prague, or Krakow and grew as artists in the atmosphere of contemporary European art instead of Soviet socialist-realist art, which was declining. This is the reason why they survived. “However, it is interesting that Deiak’s teacher was Vasyl Zabashty, who has nothing to do with Transcarpathian School at all,” Viktor KHOMENKO, artist, the publisher of the Ukrainian Art magazine expressed his perception of the exhibited works. According to him, judging from coloristics the paintings of Deiak fit the best to the Transcarpathian School. However, he says, works by the artist are still the example of the new Ukrainian coloristics that appeared in the 1960s. “It is nothing new but rather well forgotten old. His work combines traditions of a good academic school and modern vision of art development. Mykhailo Deiak is an example of how it is possible to combine knowledge, taste, good traditions, and to present contemporary Ukrainian art,” summarized Khomenko.
Deiak’s works were presented in about a dozen solo exhibitions. His paintings are now in collections of the National Museum of Ukrainian Art and private collections in Ukraine, Russia, France, and Canada.
