SOPILNIAK VASYL

Member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine (1989).

He was born in 1953 in Irshava, Transcarpathia. He got art education primarily in Transcarpathia – in 1972, he graduated from the Uzhhorod School of Applied Arts, and later he studied at the Faculty of Sculpture at the Kyiv State Art Institute.

Immediately after graduating, in 1983, he started working at the Uzhhorod College of Arts named after A. Erdeli. In 1995, he headed the Department of Sculpture of the institution.

According to art critics, the artist's works reveal a deep inner spiritual world, a humanistic outlook. In the centre of the sculptor’s creative interests – a person’s identity. His creative ideas he embodied both in monumental and small plastic works. He used various techniques: wood, tinted plaster, marble, artificial stone. The last years of his life he devoted to the restoration of the plasticity of a female body, as well as to the search for art images in natural material.

Describing works of V. Sopilniak, an art critic Mykhailo Pryimych noted, that rough matter in the hands of the master turns into the inspired process. Tenderness, openness and defenselessness characterize the heroes of the Transcarpathian artist’s works. "... Sculptural compositions of Vasyl Sopilniak – a kind of testimony of love for Light and Good", the famous art historian Andrii Budkevych wrote.

In 1989, he joined the National Union of Artists of Ukraine. His wife and son are also engaged in art: Tetiana Sopilniak – a painter, Oleksandr Sopilniak – a ceramist.

Constant participant in regional and all-Ukrainian exhibitions.