Serhiy Savchenko is an incredible artist from the Ukrainian city of Lviv, whose unapologetic, intuitive and rebelliously romantic work reinvents and develops Abstract, Expressionist, contemporary Impressionist and conceptual art
Serhiy Savchenko was born in Lviv, Ukraine, in 1972, where he studied at the Lviv College of Decorative and Applied Arts and then at the Lviv National Academy of Arts. Savchenko currently works and lives between Lviv and the Polish city of Gdańsk, where, in 2019, he established an independent progressive art space – the Savchenko Gallery, which nurtures local emerging artists’ careers. Savchenko’s compelling visceral art, full of intrigue, has gained recognition in countries throughout the world – including Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Canada, USA, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Japan, Poland and United Kingdom. Fearless sensuality and an exhilarating primordial sense of freedom emanate from Savchenko’s works. The artist renders his subjects intuitively with curiosity, avidity and excitement of a first man on Earth, as if continuously rediscovering them afresh.
Remarkably authentic, he constantly challenges the traditional, reinvents and develops Abstract, Expressionist, contemporary Impressionist and conceptual art. Savchenko’s striking pioneering techniques of mark making, of texturing and zoning, enable him to create images that are unenclosed, strongly liberating and powerful.
Savchenko’s musical background reveals itself in the swinging rhythms, in the oscillations, in the pulsating unbridled energy and the uninhibited dynamics that inevitably conjure up images of jazz, soul, blues and tangy rock ballads. Once he was a guitarist in a Ukrainian rock band, today Savchenko produces paintings that touch and pull the heartstrings.
With the help of impulsive unrestrained mark making, of doodles, of weeping brushstrokes and temperamental decisive brushwork, Savchenko speaks to the viewer, articulates urgency and poignancy, imbues the artworks with a sketchy tangibility. His gradations of texture and of colour intensity subtly discuss interweaving of reverie and tactility, of myth-making and materiality, of elusiveness and physical ecstasy.
Without drifting into escapist fantasies or resorting to hyper-dramatic motifs and manipulative arrangements, Savchenko manages to configure suggestive and expanding worlds for the audiences to engage with. His choice of subjects and compositional logic are devoid of hierarchy and convention – they are psychologically brilliant.
Serhiy likes to explore ambience and depth by means of examining interrelation of volumes. Many of Savchenko’s vibrant still life, landscapes, cityscapes and seascapes are developed by intersecting planes of voluminous patch-like brushwork that manage to capture diffusion and concentration of light, topography, architectonics, transient effects such as haze, temperature, humidity and precipitation. The subjects are simplified yet intensified resulting in works that are convincing, informative and multidimensional, and seem to record every minor nuance – a sound, an aroma…
Considering Savchenko’s Modernist partial abandonment of figuration and Impressionist representation of environment, he has been justifiably described as the most ‘enigmatic blender of semi-abstract art and modern Impressionism’. Still, not fully adopting any of the established techniques and instead carving out a path of his own, Savchenko creates paintings that do not require to be interpreted – they are eloquent on the level of sensual perception. Audiences find themselves immersed in wild woodlands of his fierce creative mind, primeval sensuality, arresting energy and romanticism that is almost rebellious.
