Oleh Minko. Non-socialist painting

Oleh Minko’s name stands next to the artists Ivan Marchuk, Zynovii Flinta, Liubomyr Medved — all of them were his fellow students. As a student, the Makiivka-born Minko harmoniously blended in with the erstwhile Lviv artistic milieu, which strove to create something uninfected by socialist realism. For convenience, his creative work can be divided into three periods: avant-garde experiments in the 1960s, transition to the expressive figurativeness in the 1970-1980s, and return to absolute formal freedom with elements of expressionism after independence. Interestingly, the figurative period which could be interpreted as a sort of a compromise with the social circumstances of those years does not look defective compared to the others. Conversely, the tension between the author’s inventiveness and the pressure of the form makes these paintings especially dramatic.

The launch of the artist’s personal exhibit took place at the ABC-Art Gallery, located in one of Kyiv’s most awkward and interesting places, Vozdvyzhenka District. The gallery assisted in publishing an Imena book series which already included Borys Buriak’s album. This time the event presented an album dedicated to Minko’s life and creative work. According to the publishers, the design was intentionally asymmetrical, in order to show the spirit of the Sixtiers who rebelled against conventions. Besides photo replicas, biographical data, and photos, it includes the journalist Svitlana Yeremenko’s essay “Painting as a Prayer” about the life and oeuvre of the artist. She said that previously she had not known anything about the artist — the greater her interest in his creative work after she met him: “I have understood that I should do everything to make him better known in Ukraine and the world.”

After the launch, Minko shared his experience with young artists. In his opinion, the main thing is not to try to be fashionable, but to strive to do something solely on your own. Time will show whether Minko’s successors will follow his words, but I will take a chance and assume that the correlation between those who consider art a part of the market, and those who view it as original creative work, will remain approximately the same as it has been in all preceding historical epochs.