Stashko Yulii

Y. Stashko belongs to the generation of those Transcarpathian artists who started practicing art in the first post-war years - the late 1940s - early 1950s. A graduate of Uzhhorod Art College. He consolidated and followed the best traditions of local painting, he was inspired by the aesthetics of folk culture in his work, with its expressive decorative stylistics and poetic imagery. He belonged to the generation of representatives of graphic art, who significantly influenced the evolving development of this kind of regional fine arts. They were S. Malchytskyi, E. Hrabovskyi, B. Berets, and P. Bedzir. For the artist folk art was an inexhaustible source of inspiration, a powerful spiritual stimulus for creativity. He organically combined in his works bright and distinct folklore with innovative style searches of European postmodernism of the first half of the last century.

Y. Stashko's first artistic attempts were made in the field of oil painting, but over time his artistic priorities completely shifted towards graphic art. The author positioned himself with graphics, tried his strength, experimented in various graphic techniques - drawing with pencil and pen, watercolour, gouache, pastel, monotype, tempera, later - chemical pencils and felt-tip pens. If, in his early graphic works, he, in general, did not go beyond the limits of several tones, then over time the imaginative space of his works exploded into bright palette. The artist, as it was, "recalled" the early lessons of painting, which he learned in the creative studios of Y. Bokshai, A. Erdeli, and F. Manailo.

His small chamber visual appeals were performed by the author's technique - these are living, sincere, and impartial pictures of holidays and scenes of people's everyday life in which the artist chose a convenient rhetoric of stylistics, active factors of which were sonorous local colours, motivated deformation, stylization, and generalization of painting forms. Widely known are the series "Markets", "Fairs", "Sales". Expressive silhouette painting, created by harmonious matching and contrast collisions of colours - red, blue, yellow, green, and violet conveyed bright polyphonic chords. Clear, flat graphic forms, laconic colour spots made up an elegant kaleidoscopic pattern.

Y. Stashko was the author of masterfully painted still lifes and landscapes. Most of the artist's still lifes remained within the limits of folklore themes. Often the "characters" of this thematic variety were objects of national life, selected works of nameless masters - woven carpets and embroidered towels, artistic ceramics and woodcarvings. All these generously decorated objects of folk art conveyed the admiration of the author and his amazement of the worthy talent of the people of the Carpathian land. They, like the subject composition, carried eloquent signs of aesthetic self-sufficiency, were on open, clean colours, marked by expressive silhouette writing and decorative organization of the graphic sheet surface, conveyed the author's admiration of the special charm, harmony, and coherence of the world order.

Depending on the chosen intonation, the author's landscapes excited by the romantic elevation of the figurative system or quiet chamber tune.

Yulii Stashko - a participant of art exhibitions since 1948. Personal exhibitions were in 1985, and 1993 in Uzhhorod, and  the posthumous exhibition was in Uzhhorod in 1998.