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About New Collection
Slava Posudevsky (Born1963 in Ukraine)
Slava Posudevsky was born September 28, 1963 in the central Ukrainian village of Zhezhelliv. His mother fostered his early love of architecture, music, and art by sending him to an art school at the age of 10. It was there that Slava first grasped the fundamentals of line, colour, and structural compositions. His early paintings depict houses, portraits, and still lifes. His true passion for painting and creative integrity would come later, but it was essential to start with these basic technical compositions.
At 19, Slava was sent to the army to begin his mandatory two-year service in the Soviet military. This was a most interesting time in his life as superiors noticed his skills. While rising to the rank of Sergeant Major and commanding a platoon of 30 men and 4 tanks, he was given the charge of creating propaganda art for the military as well as creating the murals that adorned the walls of the military clubs and bars. While he enjoyed laying his brush to the canvas and gaining further technical skill, there was absolutely no room for creative freedom and after his two year conscription has ended, Slava returned to civilian life and entered the university.
While still enjoying painting, he felt that architecture was where he would find a career. So, at 21, he entered the architectural faculty at the Building and Construction University in Kiev. Slava actively designed new buildings, which were realized during his university years. He continued painting, creating installation art for parks, grammar schools, and professional buildings. He continued his studies for 5 and a half years and when finished found a world much different then the one he had expected to live in. The year was 1989 and with it, the fall of communism.
Ukraine, like other post-communist countries immediately became centres of growth and commerce and these first few years following the fall were prosperous ones. Slava spent his time designing new banks and painting in his free time. But, that would end in 1994 when Ukraine’s economy collapsed causing a surge of immigration to the West. Slava had visited Prague before, but now found the capital of the Czech Republic his new home. The Czech economy faired better than most of the old bloc countries and a growing wave of tourism allowed Slava to focus on his painting skills, creating watercolours and cityscapes of Prague. He still felt he wasn’t expressing himself enough in his work. Spending evenings with fellow artists in cafes discussing art and their impressions of the world around them focused Slava in his pursuit for a style all his own.
His first independent compositions focused on music and its relation to both the artist and the audience. But, how does one hear music with the eye and not the ear? This question among others reverberated in his head. And it seems that the answers never fully presented themselves as concrete and unchanging. It’s the continual search for new outlets of expression and influence that create the art. Art is unpredictable. One sees in his work, the basis of realism, which is that early influence from school and the military, but the visible elements of abstract surrealism and cubism reveal Slava’s later influences, which can only lead him further.
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