06.02.2015 - 28.02.2015
On February 5-28, Tauvers Gallery International shows a personal exhibition of paintings by the Ukrainian-born American artist Max Vityk, an active figure in the artistic life (international exhibitions, art fairs), whose works won recognition all over the world. His paintings are among top lots of the leading Western auctions of modern art. A number of works were acquired by Ukrainian museums.
Max Vityk’s creation features mutual influence of two cultures – American and Ukrainian. «Critics describe Vityk’s style as abstract neo-expressionism, with Bacon and Pollock, his «Anglo-American teachers», seen through the familiar maze of the Ukrainian visual mythology». (No. 3 (71) MARCH 2013 | ANTIKVAR).
The exhibition at Tauvers Gallery International is a retrospective of the artist’s work over the past five years. It features more than a dozen pieces of different arts and techniques. On display are bright and grand, deep, colorful and expressive paintings «Summer Landscape» (2011), «Tibet» (2011), that gave an impetus for the Subsoil series, 2014. Furthermore, Ukrainian spectators will for the first time see works of the Fragments series, 2014. It is a creative, sometimes fanciful burst of the author’s artistic fantasy – a series of accidental elements, auxiliary images, born as he was working on the main painting, later completed and shaped through combination of lines, contours, colors, in fact on pieces of cardboard. Those images grow independent, giving rise to new, unexpected associations.
Max Vityk (b. 1964) is an American artist of Ukrainian descent. He came to art in his mid career, after getting a PhD in the Earth Sciences and working as a geologist in the US. Max began painting in the late 1990’s when living in Houston, Texas. His primary education in geology, combined with art training, has greatly influenced his painting style to produce canvases with unique multilayers rock-like textures, energetic broad brushstrokes and naturally vibrant colors. As one art critic wrote: “When Vityk looks at a mountain, he doesn’t see its top, but the forces that created it.” After the US, Max moved to Ukraine where he was invited for a number of successful solo shows including a major retrospective. Following Ukraine, Max opened his studio in the Hague, Holland and later in Cairo, Egypt. Max’s work can be found in private, corporate and institutional collections worldwide. Max currently lives and works in Cairo.
Author: Max Vityk