Lviv artist Roman Romanyshyn gains recognition abroad (02/09/97)

Lviv artist Roman Romanyshyn gains recognition abroad

by Daria Darewych

TORONTO - Ukraine has many talented contemporary artists. However, talent and success at home are no guarantee of international recognition.

The work of the 40-year-old Lviv artist Roman Romanyshyn, whose prolific oeuvre encompasses prints, paintings and sculpture, has gained increasing recognition in European art circles.

Last year the Museum of Contemporary Art in Geneva purchased three works from the artist's one-man exhibit held at the Gallerie Saint Léger in November.

The Latvian gallery Rigas-Vini in Riga, after holding a one-man exhibition of Mr. Romanyshyn's works in 1995, chose to showcase the Ukrainian artist at the Milan Art Fair in 1996. Last year the gallery purchased all 22 Romanyshyn works exhibited at the gallery in December and is planning to bring these works to this year's Art Fair in New York.

Born in 1957 in Tlumach, western Ukraine, Mr. Romanyshyn graduated from the Lviv Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts in 1982. His first solo exhibit was held in Peremyshl, Poland, in 1986. The following year the artist's mixed-media paintings attracted attention at the Molodist Kraiiny (Young Artists') exhibition in Kyiv. Other solo exhibits followed: at the Museum of Ethnography, Lviv, 1990; Szuper Gallery, Munich, 1992, 1993; the Susekullen, Olofstrom, Sweden, 1994; and the Ukrainian House, Kyiv, 1994.

In the spring of 1996 the French Cultural Center in Kyiv hosted a solo exhibition of Mr. Romanyshyn's 40 prints inspired by the 19th century French poets Apollinaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine and Baudelaire. The artist's work was also on display at the Geneva International Art Fair (May 1-5). This, in turn, led to an invitation to exhibit at the aforementioned Gallerie Saint Léger.

Mr. Romanyshyn's work is unique in its images and inter-relationships of the real, imagined and subconscious. The compositions are most often complex and full of symbolism. Although there is a dominance of figurative images, considerable attention is paid to the formal design elements.

The artist takes great pride in his workmanship. His etchings, aquatints, intaglios, dry point and any combinations thereof are technically superb. He has adapted the batik technique used in Ukrainian Easter egg designs to create paintings with strong white contours and rich color. He has developed a technique for transferring paintings on glass onto paper while retaining the luminosity of the original.

Usually Mr. Romanyshyn works in a series format, with specific themes and motifs appearing in individual works. Thematically his work encompasses the artist's meditations on history, literature, and the meaning of life and death. Often he uses religious or historical events as commentary on present-day situations.

In some of Mr. Romanyshyn's work Ukrainian images and elements of Ukrainian culture intertwine with post-modern appropriations from world art, often of the Italian Renaissance. For the most part, his prints and paintings express universal concerns about life, creativity, death and eternity. At their best they transcend the familiar and commonplace into the realm of the metaphysical. Their rendering is contemporary, they stand at the threshold of international creative processes without losing their national identity.

In the last 10 years Mr. Romanyshyn has participated in 30 international exhibitions held in Ukraine, Norway, Poland, Switzerland, Canada, the United States, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain, Spain, Macedonia, Italy, Korea and Japan.

He is the recipient of various awards, among them those accorded at the Ninth International Miniature Print Exhibition in Seoul, Korea, in 1996; the Miniprint International Exhibition in Cadaqués/Barcelona, Spain, 1994; and the Third Annual International Miniprint Exhibition in Napa, Calif., 1993.

A catalogue of the artist's works has been published by the Soros Center of Contemporary Art in Kyiv (1996) in a bilingual, English-Ukrainian edition and by the Ukrainian Art Gallery in Munich (1991), as well as a German-Ukrainian edition published by Gerdan Publishers in Lviv (1991).

An exhibit of Mr. Romanyshyn's work will be held at the Ukrainian Canadian Art Foundation in Toronto February 16-March 6. This will be the second time that the artist will exhibit at the UCAF, the last time being in 1990.

The artist's U.S. exhibit will be held in March at the Alla Rogers Gallery in Washington.

| Home Page |