Demian Mykola

Mykola Demian was born on 5 April 1953 in Bohdan village, Rakhiv district, Transcarpathiain region. The craving for art, namely music and drawing, has manifested itself since his childhood. In the elementary school, the boy was attending an art group led by Vasyl Popovych. Subsequently, he studied at the art studio at the Rakhiv House of Pioneers (head Vasyl Zeikan). Studio plein airs became an occasion for acquaintance of the young artist with known Transcarpathian artists – Andrii Kotska and Fedir Manailo.

The young man did not succeed in entering the Lviv Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts, so he decided to work as a model at the department of drawing at the same institute. At the same time, he was given the opportunity to attend classes on the subject of drawing and evening preparation courses. He tried to enter again, but did not pass the competition

After military service in 1974, he became a student of the Ukrainian Polygraphic Institute named after Ivan Fedorov (now the Ukrainian Academy of Printing), mastered the specialty of “Graphics.”

In 1979, after completing his studies, Mykola Demian arrived in Uzhhorod and took the post of artistic editor in the Republican Order of Friendship of Peoples by the multi-profile book publishing house “Karpaty”, where he worked until 1993. Designed by the artist in 1990, an essay guide “Uzhhorod” ordered the library of the US Congress, which was an unprecedented case in the history of the publishing house. It is for the design that this edition received the diploma of the All-Ukrainian Contest “The Art of the Book”. The result of many years of work in the “Karpaty” is more than 80 books of socio-political, industrial, artistic, tourist and local lore literature.

Along with the publishing activity, Mykola Demyan was also fond of painting – he created over one hundred copyright works: paintings (oil on cardboard and canvas), sketches, watercolours, pastels, easel graphic works. Another hobby was photography. He collected a photographic library of more than two thousand colour slides, dozens of which were used as illustrations for publications. In addition, 339 photographs were included in the future photobook of Tibor Hasych “I'm Walking the Carpathians”, completely designed and completed by M. Demian for publication.

In the late 1990s, he worked as an art editor in collaboration with the now-known Transcarpathian artist Robert Saller in the newspaper “Silver Land”, later – in the edition of “Silver Land-FEST”. Designing the first pages of newspapers and thematic drawings to articles, he showed himself as an original caricaturist and collagist.

In 2000s, fruitfully collaborated with many publishers, but the most interesting design decisions appeared in the books of the “Art Line” – in 2001, for the design of the book of Vasyl Basarab, “Thorn Night” became the winner of the contest “Uzhhorod Book Mykola” in the category “Best Book Designer”. In the period from 2006 to 2008 he was an art editor of JSC “Publishing House “Zakarpattia”, and since 2008 – in the Transcarpathian branch of the publishing house “Znannia” (Kyiv). In general, books with the design of M. Demian, were issued in 11 publishing houses.

About 40 years he gave to books and newspaper design. 272 editions with a circulation of two million copies were published with the decoration and illustrations of Mykola Demian, which exactly for “making frames to intellectual diamonds” honoured artist of Ukraine Nadiia Ponomarenko called “The knight of the Order of the book.” And the artist does not stop at this: as of mid-2018, the following four books are already waiting for their release, designed by the author.

For the 60th anniversary, Mykola Demian had prepared the project, decorating, design, artistic and technical editing, computer layout of the autobiographical edition "An Artist from Hutsul’s Paris", which included more than a thousand illustrations.

Works of easel graphics and book illustrations of a talented artist were exhibited at numerous regional and republican exhibitions.