It Is Hard to Be Light-Minded: Show of Works by Ivan Tarasyuk in Tsereteli Art Gallery

Tsereteli Art Gallery presents a solo show of works by the noted St. Petersburg painter, master of graphic and decorative art Ivan Tarasyuk produced by the artist in various techniques and genres from the 1990s till 2011.

Ivan Tarasyuk was born in 1957 in Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg). In 1988 he graduated from I. Repin St. Petersburg State Academy Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture where he majored in graphic art. Since 1981, Ivan Tarasyuk has been a frequent participant in numerous art shows in Russia and abroad, more than 50 solo shows of the artist were held in Russia, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, China, France, Switzerland.

In his creative work Ivan Tarasyuk has skillfully combined traditions of folk art, burlesque theatre, St. Petersburg school of graphic art, elements of avant-garde and postmodernism. The artist’s early lithographs have already revealed his search for generalization and character types, his subsequent works obtained a distinguished decorative feature, especially clearly seen in his ceramic sculptures.

His inexhaustible creation of forms results from reality, from everyday life. Many of the artist’s interests – circus, theatre, music, personal contacts – have found their reflection in his works. Wide is the range of his intonations – from ironic genre motif to a kind of popular print, from grotesque to lyricism. There are also dramatic motifs in the depiction of street musicians, in the duet of a poet and a mime.

Ivan Tarasyuk is an associated Academician of the International Academy of Fine Arts “Greece-Marino” (Italy).

Works by Ivan Tarasyuk are in collections of the Russian State Museum, Russian National Library, Library of the State Hermitage (collection of ex-librises), museums in Russia and other countries.




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