Ivan Pylypenko

Ivan Pylypenko has come a tang way in his art studies: the Kyiv Art Vocational School, the school of Viktor Zaretsky, the Arts Institute, an internship in Great Britain (Cheltenham), graduate studies at the Academy of Arts, and further study and work under the supervision of Professor Mykola Storozhenko. As the result of these years and of mastering the philosophic schools of the East, studying European painters, and practical work in art, he believes that artists should work only the things they feel, express only feelings; the subjects should be reduced to a minimum, for being informative in art is not only unnecessary but also harmful; the essence of form lays in throwing off everything superfluous and secondary, and, besides, the author must leave things out; in the treatment of the visible, the blanks should be filled in independently by the imagination of the viewer; thus, the unsaid, the parable, and the mystery; insofar as feelings are passing and ultimately undetermined, certain areas of his works are abstract, and it is all like a hint, a secret object to be interpreted, a unique puzzle Another reason for this is that the conscbus and the unconscious are always present in creative work. A magic centre must be presented in a picture (or, according to Storozhenko, the metaphysical centre); without it, the picture is rough-hewn. And at the same time, the creatbns should actively affect viewers, so everything in them is built on dynamics, on contrasts, transitions, combining small with large, hard and soft, the most dark with the most light, and volume with area.

To remain true to himself an artist must be very sensitive and attentively listen to his own inner depths. This subtlety eventually led Pylypenko to inevitable expression, particularly through light coburing, in the most subtle variations of colour tints, cobur constructions based on half-tints, and all this combined with his natural internal inclination to a light palette, which he had already discovered as a student. And while his maturatbn as a creative personality was a matter of time and certain disorder in his life, which was reflected in the dark colours of most of his paintings, today, with another mood and having normalised his life formulated his principles, a light palette is more corresponding for his anti-aggressive spirit. However, the dissolutbn of form in conditbnai space and neutral background, between the overall image and the details in the creation of a unifying state of soul and nature, do not take place, for the artist does not shirk from using firm lines and deliberate decorativeness.

Exquisite images have not lost the reliable principles of figurative and spatial constructiveness and have achieved exceptional refinement and aesthetic quality.

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