On September 3 Ivan Marchuk's one-man show opened at the Ivan Kavaleridze House at 21 Andriyivsky uzviz. He was born in 1936 in Moskalivka, a village in Ternopil oblast, into Stepan and Natalia Marchuk's warm- hearted family. In their home an atmosphere of loving care and diligence prevailed. Father was a skilled weaver, carpenter, a virtuoso shoemaker, a gifted although amateur mathematician and philosopher. And he was a devout believer. Ivan's mother was always gentle and very fond of folk crafts. Putting the children to sleep, she would sing them folk songs, praying for them to grow as decent hard-working individuals, and wove the village's best carpets, quilts, and decorated her husband's wickerwork.

Ivan started drawing at an early age, everything he saw around him, «a cow carrying the sun on her horns, a ram I would ride, a bumblebee buzzing indefatigably over flowers, a crow to whose nest I would finally get. Ever since I have felt guilty before that crow. It must forgotten all about me, but I still keep painting her portrait.»

After finishing school Ivan Marchuk went to Lviv and enrolled in the ceramics department of a vocational college. In 1965, after graduation, he moved to Kyiv, worked for the Institute of Superhard Materials and a decorative-applied art combine. From 1980 on, he has been completely engrossed in his work. Through extreme exertion and denying himself all earthly temptations, Ivan Marchuk finally reached the peaks of world art.

«I dreamed of drawing people's gaze to the skies with my art, showing them the ever shining eternal image.» But how could I? With what? I turned away from monumentalism and ceramics, but I still had a long way to go to the real fine arts.»

He searched for the voice of his own soul. This search was incredibly difficult and long, considering the Procrustean criteria of socialist realism. He simply did not fit into that straitjacket either in terms of form or content. The earth and outer space, daily routine and philosophic immersion, free manipulation of set canons, breaching the proportion of nature and established views — such was the material Ivan Marchuk used in making his pictures, the way one builds oneself a home. His every canvas is permeated with his own sensitive heart, penetrating mind, and inimitable profoundly folk style. All this results in creations rich in the biblical spirit, fleeting moments captured and made eternal.

Great art is impervious to pragmatic analysis; it cannot be described in so many words. Ivan Marchuk's pictures have to be seen. Those that understand them will never forget them, returning to them in their memories the way one thinks of one's own faraway home. Every watchful eye and open heart will discern in his art such lasting virtues as love, good, belief in the individual and in his lofty mission.