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Nonconformist from Odesa

Photo courtesy of the ABC-ART GALLERY

The ABC-art gallery has Serhii Savchenko’s works on display November 26 through December 18. Savchenko is one of the most notable nonconformists in Odesa. His name is inseparably linked with the activities of the Odesa group of painters, as it is called in the West, and the artistic union Mamai, their self-designation.

Savchenko’s approach was shaped along the lines of non-figurative imagery. He uses his wild, color-intensive abstract designs in painting, easel graphical art, and sculpture. Savchenko entered Ukraine’s artistic space in the 1970s, when creative personalities had to survive in the harsh conditions of social realism. However, he was interested in the Soviet type of art and for many years had to keep distance from the official factors. It was only later that he managed to make an open statement. Paradoxically, Savchenko first generated interest in the West — his works found their way to numerous collections of foreign connoisseurs, especially in Great Britain.

Savchenko is the inventor and explorer of colors. His coloristic vision, complex and at the same time harmonious, is the foundation for his noted painting and graphical abstract patterns. Another original facet of his talent is the plastic perception of color, a special sensitivity to capturing its various space-dimensional forms. This artistic feature matured and was completed in his polychromous sculpture and painting of natural objects, such as dried pumpkins of a certain kind.

Savchenko’s composition gravitates toward the depiction of sensual structures, conflicts, and emotional upheavals, rather than exclusively intellectual constructs. His most recent solo exhibit took place in Kyiv in 2006, so the display in ABC-art will be a welcome opportunity to see the varied creations of this Odesa-based painter.

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