RUSHCHAK YOZHEF

Member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine (1987)

He was born on 25 March 1943 in Khust, Transcarpathian region. He was growing up in a large family. His father was a shoemaker and hoped that his eldest son Yozhef would continue this work. However, the boy dreamed of drawing. In the next house, there lived an amateur artist, a schoolteacher Ivan Haidu. Friendship with Haidu's two sons, gave the opportunity to Yozhef to see how the artist painted. Soon he also took up the brush. In the late 1950s, in Khust there lived an icon painter Potapov, who taught Yozhef the basics of drawing and painting.

In 1961, the Yozhef began his studies at the Art Pottery Department of the Uzhhorod College of Applied Arts, where his teachers were Mykola and Edita Medvetska, Kostiantyn Lozovyi, Pavlo Balla, Ivan Harapko, Vitalii Zvenyhorodskyi, and Oleksandr Demydiuk. A significant influence on the formation of the artist's made creative vision of the coryphaei of the Transcarpathian School of Painting Fedir Manailo, Ernest Kontratovych, Anton Kashshai, and Volodymyr Mykyta. At that time, Yozhef became interested in oil painting and admired the landscape more.

While studying at college, the young artist began to work. At first, he painted the agitating posters at the orphanage and later got a job of the artist-designer at the plant named after Borkaniuk. In the third year, a young man was drafted into the army. After three years of serving, he returned to the college. Upon graduation in 1968, he decided to stay in Uzhhorod and became an aesthetics engineer at the communications department, whose duties included the design of post offices throughout the Transcarpathian region.

In 1972, Yozhef Rushchak was employed at the Transcarpathian branch of the “Art Fund”, dedicating more than 30 years of his life to it. His colleagues on the artistic projects were the well-known artists Vladyslav Habda and Vasyl Svaliavchyk. Being a member of the Youth Association of the Transcarpathian branch of the Union of Artists of Ukraine, the artist became an active participant in the exhibitions.

Then there was a significant event in the artist’s creative life – the head of the All-Union Youth Union invited him to join one of the best creative bases of the Soviet Union in Seniezh. Within two months, together with 60 artists from all over the country, Yozhef was creating space compositions that gave him recognition for the first time. Moscow purchased several works, the rest was included into the exhibition collection presented in Germany, Belgium, Madagascar.

Since the 1970s, the artist worked extensively in the plein airs, devoting all his free time to creative work. The theme of the Carpathian nature is a leitmotif of the artist’s canvases. Panoramic and chamber landscapes, as the main genre of the author's works, are full of horizons of Verkhovyna villages, picturesque mountains, meadows, and forests. An art critic Oksana Havrosh described the work of the artist as follows: “Peculiar for the author are the emotional reflections and experiences of the natural beauty of his native land. Numerous painting experiments allow us to speak of the influence of expressionists, for whom creativity was not just reproduction, but the inner experience of the seen. Based on the traditions of the Transcarpathian landscape, Yozhef Rushchak created a whole gallery of the Carpathian landscapes – romantically elegant and lyrical paintings.”

“To live in harmony with oneself and the outside world” – the philosophical credo of the artist.
Creative anxiety distinguished the artist from among other colleagues: organization of plein airs, symposiums, international exhibition events – the artist’s life in the 90s, 2000s. The author held several personal exhibitions in Ukraine, Slovakia, and Hungary. He also managed to implement the idea of the creative exchanges between his hometown Khust and Lipany (Slovakia), which later became twinned towns. It was the first foreign experience for numerous artists and schoolchildren in the art exchange community.

In 2004, Yozhef Rushchak was awarded the Regional Prize named after Y. Bokshai and A. Erdeli in the field of fine arts for his work “My Paths”.

The artist’s works are kept in the museums of Ukraine and Russia, as well as in private collections of the United States of America, Canada, Israel, Germany, France, Hungary, and Slovakia.

Yozhef Rushchak died on 7 April 2016.