CHERNII YOSYP

He is the member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine (1987).

He studied drawing bases and painting in Children's Studio of Fine Arts of the famous pedagofue Zoltan Bakoniia in Uzhhorod. He got his professional education in Kyiv Art School named after T. Shevchenko (1969) and in Lviv Printing Institute named after I. Fedorov (1976). Since 1973 he took part in regional, national and international exhibitions. He visited creative groups in Jurmala and Seniezh. He traveled around the cities of Uzbekistan, and then demonstrated his first personal exhibition in Uzhhorod in 1980, where were represented 50 graphic and 12 painting works.

Early stage of artist’s work was extraordinary, original, sincere and emotional, despite the theme and style of Transcarpathian school. His works were allocated by arrhythmic spots, plane images, lack of specification, graphic manner. Using expressional pastosity of strokes and generalizing images, he pictures life without embellishment, daily life and daily work of Verkhovyna’s people. Genre scenes of his canvases filled with distinct notes of drama, fate of inevitability of destiny.

He was one of the first Transcarpathian artists who held a successful personal exhibition in Moscow (1982). Personal exhibitions also took place in Uzhgorod (1980, 1986, 1996) and Budapest (1994,1995). Since the late 1980s, he painted mainly in pastels. Thus started a new stage in artist’s creative activity. Lyrical and nostalgic landscapes of Uzhhorod, which painted in the realistic genre, became the main themes. In 2003 he opened art gallery “Art Salon of Chernii” which even after the artist’s death still works thanks to his wife – Nadiia Chernii. The artist passionately loved his hometown and wherever he was, signed his works “Y. Chernii from Uzhhorod”. It was under this name, only in Russian, in the late 2000s there was a catalogue in which photographic reproductions of 37 works of the artist were placed.

Oleksandr Nikitchuk