Zvenyhorodskyi Vitalii

Vitalii Zvenyhorodskyi is a talented Transcarpathian landscape painter who, from his first independent steps in art, showed a fervent devotion to the local painting tradition, in particular realistic landscape painting, characterized by the expressive sound of the author's mood notes. This distinctive feature of his own style he began and formed within Uzhhorod College of Arts under the guidance of Y. Bokshai, E. Kontratovych, V. Berets, carried through his student years at Lviv Art Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts, where he improved his professional skills in the creative studio of Y. Bokshai, who soon wrote for a young talented artist a letter of recommendation for joining the Union of Artists of Ukraine.

With the diploma of the artist and monumentalist, V. Zvenyhorodskyi returns to Uzhhorod. The mountainous land became for him - a native of the steppe Ukraine - the second native land. Being selflessly in love with the beauty of surrounding landscapes, he devoted all his talent to the glorifying of the magnetizing charms of his native land with its abundant  colours, quiet chamber places, and wide monumental scope of mountain panoramas. The nature in paintings of Zvenyhorodskyi is always conformable to the author's outlook, in which his positivist view of the realities of life and manifestations of the natural around are clearly displayed. In harmony with himself and environment, the artist creates his kind world, enveloped in elegiac dreaminess or light sadness, and sometimes permeated with romantic mood and heightened emotionality.

V. Zvenyhorodskyi, enchanted by the nature of his native land at different times of the year, masterfully arranges painting forms, finds suitable colour and plastic associations. Nature in his landscapes is invariably motionless in its majestic beauty. For the author there are no minor details. By the unshakable conviction of the master, any corner of his native land deserves a brush, asks to be painted. The artist emphasizes the importance, self-sufficiency, and aesthetic value of each fragment, which is an integral part of the large, indivisible, and wise world order.

The artist prefers to paint "pure" sceneries, deliberately avoiding the image of a person or traces of her/his activities. Thus, he tried to demonstrate primitive beauty of the earth, to represent it clear, pure, and untouched, which God created it. One of the favourite landscape scenes of the artist is water: quiet rivers and ponds, dreamy lakes, in the smoothness of which it is reflected the surrounding forests, mountains,  and bottomless blue sky.

V. Zvenyhorodskyi has never resorted to extreme formal searches, he "paints" within his aesthetic programme, without changing the tradition of realistic painting. The magical world of his paintings created by the restrained palette with a dominant primary colour. Most often - it's a noble dark purple, deep emerald green, or warm olive and ochre. A rich gradation of shades of these colours creates graceful colour harmony, which, combined with the perfection of calligraphic realistic painting, gives the artist's paintings a special appeal and sophistication.

Painting work of Vitalii Zvenyhorodskyi, the laureate of the Ar Prize named after Y. Bokshai and A. Erdeli, have never been unnoticed at the exhibitions of different levels - city, regional, all-Ukrainian, and foreign. They invariably attracted with clarity, genuine visual painting, sincerity and immediacy of the author's emotions.