Apollonov is Ukrainian Picasso. Just as unpredictable and as good – no matter what he does. Yesterday, it was the Crimean plein air, which took our breath away. Today – The Dancers, a la Larionov, another planet (don’t you find that Apollonov-Priduvalova couple resembles Larionov-Goncharova duet?).

The Dancers is our “Bachelorette” and all those girls with pumped lips. Primary and secondary, look, not enough of cars. Apollonov, paint a car!

The X-ray artist. Later, philosophers will come to reflect on “longreads” being no longer relevant. Indeed, those “rares” will soon be burned – see “Fahrenheit 451”. If Apollonov will survive – he will be taken to the museum.

Akhra’s flowers are smelling of Abkhazia. He has been living in Kyiv for years now – but they keep smelling. Of that very Abkhazia – before the war, as we remember it. Got out at Sukhumi bus station and went crazy about aromas, about colors – we simply have no such rich, deep, tannic colors.

Ahra must be dreaming of those flowers. And he paints not the flowers bought at Otradnensky market, but those from Sukhumi of his youth. He paints dreams – about being young and happy. Like Gauguin, who once sent his Tahitian dreams sailing to Europe, tired of its dullness.

His landscapes are even more magical – you just feel immersing into them. Abkhazia? Ukraine? The country where you were happy. However, there is a kind of mystery, something hidden behind the picture. Metaphysical landscapes – they have something “beyond the physics laws”.

A one-man band. An architect by training, he’s written film scripts, edited the first Ukrainian magazines on contemporary art, held Ukrainian-French meetings, built the first art objects/installations in Ukraine.

And painting, painting, painting – his passion, thirst, mania. He has been awarded numerous international prizes. One of the leading Ukrainian artists. He is looking for a purely Ukrainian dimension in the contemporary art space.

Petro Bevza: “Our task is to find a Ukrainian sector of transcendent values images, expressed in the contemporary art language.”

The night sky over Kyiv by Beliusenko is the sky where Bulgakov’s Margarita used to fly. Kyiv is the city of Viy. The enchanting city.

The pines by Beliusenko are the pines Gokusai. Kyiv Tokaido – from Darnitsa to Svyatoshino. Incredibly light, incredibly free – a couple of brushstrokes and the canvas begin to breathe. The Tao breath.

A little bit more of Crimea. How much have we drunk there, under the fabulous walls of the Genoese fortress in the Cozy-Zatyshny, where Beliusenko used to live! Streams of paint, through which emerges a rigid silhouette of the Sudak Bay – when he forms the space like a demiurge.

Demiurge also lectures on the art of the 20-21st centuries. About the art of the future. When the painting comes back again. Beliusenko has already started to pave the way.

Matvey Vaisberg is an absolutely museum artist. In autumn 2020, he exhibited at the Khanenko Museum – he felt at home there, next to Velasquez and Zurbaran. Is it good or bad? Basquiat, for example, is an absolutely street artist. Vaisberg, on the contrary, a museum one.

In today’s apocalyptic times, when we see everything collapsing, Vaisberg is becoming the most on-trend artist – it’s important to preserve what European culture consists of. Even his tiniest sketches are seen as fragments of the large European tradition – from Cimabue and Giotto to Pollock and Kiefer. It’s not by chance that he’s so fond of “dialogues” with the great – for him, they are artist brothers, to whom he talks the language of painting.

When it comes to painting, the surest indicator is a brushstroke. It’s a kind of a cardiogram. Vaisberg’s brushstroke is like Tarkovsky’s stalker: throws a nut into space and stares there, groping after the only right path. Take a closer look at Vaisberg – it looks like this stalker will yank us out of the desert.

Besides, Vaisberg is one of the few Ukrainian artists whose paintings are sold at the famous London auctions.

Yeghiazaryan is Ukrainian Matisse. Armenian Matisse? The creator of happiness. He draws a line, and it sings! Apply a color, and it sparkles like precious stones.

He studied at the famous Mukhinsky in St. Petersburg – but ran away to sunny Kyiv; he felt bored in gray Petersburg. He has been living with us for thirty years now, got married, and exhibited in the best galleries, from Kyiv to Switzerland. Indeed, he escapes to war from time to time – he’s fought in the first Karabakh campaign, took part in both Maydans – Matisse fights for the truth!

Kyiv loves Borys – there’s no room to swing a cat when he opens his exhibitions. They can’t but love him? If you have at least a “small Yeghiazarian” at home, you have a bit of real Armenian warmth. Borys is also a believer, with his works glowing with “uncreated” light – just like ancient icons and mosaics.

Whom does Nikolay Zhuravel resemble? He resembles an angel or Carlson – moreover, he has his studio almost on the roof in the very center of Kyiv. During the first and the second Maydan, everyone gathered at his place – Zhuravel fed the young. It was not for nothing – among all the modern Ukrainian artists, Zhuravel is perhaps one of the most convertible – many Western galleries collaborate with him. He’s even among the world-famous London Saatchi’s favorites.

Why? He creates his world, the Zhuravel universe – one can spend eternity looking into it. And almost always little angels are flying there – helping, supporting, saving. They are like sweet music for the exhausted and desperate humankind during the endless pandemics.

Whom does he resemble? Giotto? Chagall? Himself. He has even invented his own, Zhuravel’s technique. He spends a long time building some intricate structure of wood and metal – a kind of Zhuravel’s salvific ark. Then, covers everything with iconic, Byzantine levkas, finishes the painting, scratches – and the ark acquires the mystical power.

It floats into a cold contemporary interior and makes it warm and humane.

Lebedynets is a magician, a wizard of color. He makes a person happy with colors only. There are two traditions of the unfigured painting. The warm one – by Kandinsky, and the cold one – by Mondrian. Lebedynets is the warmest of the warm. His smallest painting can warm the coldest interior – perhaps, that’s the reason why architects are so much fond of working with him.

Lebedynets keeps his large studio in perfect order – there are no bohemian bottles and naked women. Calm and focused, every morning he sits down in front of the canvas – like a composer at a piano. Another minute and the music will burst forth.

Lebedynets hardly manages to arrange it. Over the years, he has learned extraordinary skills.

You can spend eternity watching Levych’s paintings. One would feel like living in his painting’s space. The sea, the gulls, even the “cold north wind” – let’s turn up the collar. But its beauty takes our breath away. And no superfluous details – a kind if a Hokku of the North.

Levych’s paintings take you back to the childhood when you read shabby books with Aleksandr Green’s novels instead of stock exchange quotations. Running on waves – running on the waves created by Levych.

In the last century, the painting was repeatedly proclaimed dead; everyone expected photography and cinema killing painting at last. But it’s still living, as you can see. And how! You don’t have to be a professional art expert to see: it relies on photos. But does it look like a coloring book? It’s pure poetry.

Malykh has a house in the Carpathians. Once we celebrated the New Year there. Wolves were howling all around, and the snow was waist-deep. You felt like having been brought to the ancient times by a time-machine, and the “shadows of forgotten ancestors” were wandering around you. Perhaps, it was this place that shaped him as an artist.

He grew up in Kyiv, studied in Moscow, but when you look at what he does – molfar! He gathers various boards, twigs, and paints them with secret signs – molfar. Even when he uses decent canvas/oil, he still creates magic!

Once, art was born as magic. Malykh continues the tradition, covering the canvas with secret signs only he knows. And since he’s an “innate” colorist and has an animal sense of color, the result is splendid. I’ve seen his works in modern cottages over fireplaces – the cottages turned into fairy-tale castles at once.

Painting is my job. When I draw, I feel calm and free. I need privacy and silence in the studio, then everything concentrates in my head and hands.

My main topic is Kyiv: the “portraits” of streets, houses, arches, corners, caryatids, the game of light and shadow. I see it through color: the utmost intensity of color and light. Life is full of surprises. The main thing is to be still able to be taken by surprise. Nature already exists – it is perfect, it can’t be painted, you can only be surprised by it and imagine it as you feel it. Then, any house, any street, any tree, or face will capture and lead you... and you’ll feel the inspiration. My work should bring a feeling of peace and joy.

On the door of Shereshevskyi’s studio, the word “Genius” is written in large letters. We knock on the genius’s door respectfully and go in: the maestro is working at an easel, surrounded by friends and admirers. I think that this is how Louis XIV was drawing the schemes of Versailles surrounded by his courtiers.

Sherik, as his friends call him, is submerged with orders. And it’s not for nothing. Among too serious (read – too provincial) modern Ukrainian artists, Sherik is almost the only one who laughs. The artist #1 for a corporate gift!

However, sometimes, this laughter makes you feel sick, just look at the masterfully, Rembrandt-style painted homeless man in a sweat jacket – Olympics-80.

Those who are far from art are captured by the plot, and those who are well-versed in the painting are crazy about painting.