The Art Center “Ilko Gallery” in Uzhhorod is hosting an exhibition by Honored Artist of Ukraine, painter and muralist Vasyl Betsa. His family, friends, colleagues, and countrymen have been waiting for it. It is entitled “Homecoming” – and the name is symbolic, as the extraordinary Transcarpathian artist died in Slovakia on September 27, 2013, when he was 64.
This display, for which the artist had been preparing actively during his lifetime, became the embodiment of his dream, fulfilled by his children – daughter Aliona Betsa and her husband Andrii – assisted by Ilko Gallery, Vasyl’s friends, and his wife. As Mykhailo Ilko, a co-organizer, said at the opening ceremony, he was obliged to help, because that would repay the debt he owned to Vasyl, who had been giving priceless painting lessons to him.
The art of Vasyl Betsa, Transcarpathian native, who comes from the village of Skotarske, Volovets raion, is very diverse and vivid in terms of theme, genre, and color. His talent was recognized both at home and outside Ukraine.
The exhibition features the artist’s work in all its diversity. There are about hundred paintings, which depict landscapes of Verkhovyna, close to the painter’s heart, and the neighboring Slovakia; there are many abstract, modern, plastic works, performed in different techniques. They are made in watercolor, oil, and pastel. But all of them share the artist’s love to life, to family, to his own land. It is not by chance that warm, bright colors are prevalent in his art.
Aliona, the artist’s daughter, says that she, together with her husband and friends, had nurtured the idea of her father’s personal exhibition for two years. It was not easy to select specific works, because there are many of them. Some paintings were recovered from private collections across Kyiv and Transcarpathia, some are part of the family collection, some were brought from Slovakia, where the artist had been working in the last years of his life.
Currently, the world of high art by Vasyl Betsa is open for acquaintance in the Art Center “Ilko Gallery” for a month.
