This well-illustrated book about one of the most outstanding Ukrainian graphic artists and painters of the second half of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries, Vasyl Lopata, contains biographical data about his dynamic, interesting and instructive life for the current period of the development of Ukrainian culture. A destroyed, impoverished village in the Chernihiv region is the childhood place of the future master. The art institute and postgraduate studies in Kyiv under the leadership of famous professors and academicians Kasiyan and Deregus were the formative years of his talent. The establishment of national themes in book and easel engraving during the unprecedented Russification of Ukraine in the 1980s and 1990s is a difficult Sisyphean task, a struggle against conservatism and reactionary tendencies in "socialist" Soviet art. The acquisition of "new breath" after the independence of Ukraine, the exaltation of the Christian and national idea — these are the nineties. The work on the design of banknotes of the national currency of Ukraine, the hryvnia, is admirable. Finally, settling in 1994 on the opposite side of the globe from Ukraine, in the USA, in the city of San Francisco, where Vasyl continued his inspired work for the glory of Ukraine. The study of Vasyl Lopata's life and work is accompanied by a detailed professional analysis of his series, cycles and individual works of graphics and painting.
Hardcover, 304 pages