Ukrainian artist finds his niche in Prague (12/17/95)

Ukrainian artist finds his niche in Prague

by Andrij Wynnyckyj

PRAGUE - Make your way through the narrow picturesque streets of Prague's Stare Mesto (Old Town), and you'll be in for a pleasant surprise - the thriving gallery run by expatriate Ukrainian painter Roman Zuzuk.

Situated in a wedge-like space on Jilska Street, it boasts vaulted ceilings, large windows and bright lighting. The sign outside says, "Exhibition of East European Modern Art - Ukrainian, Russian, Bulgarian - Roman Zuzuk and His Friends."

Mr. Zuzuk, 34, was born in the village of Selets, near Ivano-Frankivske. He studied at the Symferopil Art School in 1980-1984, then trained in icon restoration at the Kyiv Academy of Fine Arts. His first individual show was held at Kyiv University in 1989. His first in Prague came in 1991, at the RAPID gallery.

The painter has also had exhibitions in Germany (Berlin, Frankfurt-on-Main and Worpsvede) and Italy (Florence), and is planning to attend the upcoming Biennale that is to be held in Barcelona next year.

The friends are a group of Bulgarian artists, Boyko Asparukhov, Nikolai Zlatiev, Bistra Bakalova, and a Russian, Valeria Yelts. "I met all of the Bulgarians when I first came," Mr. Zuzuk said, "they had already been living and working here, earning a living in the street, in the market, on the Karlovy Bridge." Ms. Yelts is a friend of Marina, Mr. Zuzuk's wife, an architect.

It's easy to see how Mr. Zuzuk makes friends: he is taciturn and modest, yet affable and workmanlike. Through his industriousness and a canny survival instinct, he quickly managed to move off the street and gain a foothold in this city in transition.

"Just today I managed to extend the contract to rent this place for about a year," Mr. Zuzuk confided in early November, "but the people who own the building could decide to turn it into a hotel or restaurant at the drop of a hat."

Situated on the Vltava (or the Moldau, for Germans), Prague has long been called "the Paris of the East." In recent years, the Bohemian capital has been compared to Paris of the 1920s, because of the torrent of all manner of artists, adventurers, entrepreneurs, tourists and hacks arriving from around the world - the U.S. and Canada in particular.

Since 1991, it has been estimated that anywhere from 35,000 to 50,000 North Americans have settled more or less permanently in "Zlata Praha", (Golden Prague), and that an astounding 80 million people from around the world have visited the town, descending on it like a massive touristic fist.

Mr. Zuzuk was one of the earliest arrivals. He first came to Prague in the fall of 1990, together with a group of artists mounting an anti-AIDS show. "They went back home, I stayed," he explains. "At first, I lived on my visitor's visa for about six months, now I've brought my wife, my son [Mykhailo] was born here, and we've filed for permanent residency."

He credits Rumen Sazdov, a Bulgarian artist, for enabling him to make the grade off the street into galleries. "We held a two-man show together at the Jewish museum in the Old-New Synagogue," Mr. Zuzuk said, "and I've been shown in various places since."

Mr. Zuzuk is a rarity: an artist at ease with the most unforgiving aspect of his craft - selling. "Let me tell you," he confided over potato pancakes at a typically Czech combination jazz spot/restaurant/hotel called U Stare Pani, "painting is much harder than selling paintings."

Back in the gallery, paid a compliment about a work resplendent with joyous yellows and oranges, and figures clothed in hypnotic checker-diamond patterned clothing, Mr. Zuzuk groused, "A crazy German came here and asked me to paint something loud with those kind of squares in it - never heard from him again."

Asked whether such requests distort his work, the artist replied, "No, it makes me think about what I'm doing. I'm not being corrupted. After all, who paints these things? It's still me trying to deal with ancient questions. The fact that someone asks me to do something just makes me concentrate on a particular question, that's all. Don't get me wrong, I like this painting."

So if you're ever tempted to visit the mysterious city of the best beer in the world, Franz Kafka, Antonin Dvorak, Rabbi Loew, and the myriad ghosts from the court of King Rudolf, friend of the alchemists, treat yourself to a visual feast - Roman Zuzuk's gallery at Jilska 7, 110 00 Praha 1. He can be reached by telephone at 42-2-2422-9808, by fax at 42-2-651-0965.

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