«Viktor Maryniuk. To Live Carefully»

Viktor Maryniuk is a legend of Odesa nonconformism.

He belongs to a group of artists who began their creative path at the same time as the destruction of the socialist realism canon. For three decades before, art in the Soviet Union was isolated from the world art process. It was this group in Odesa that overcame many years of isolation. It was these artists who absorbed and mastered the whole experience of the picturesque language of the twentieth century, coming through their own experience to emancipation of artistic form, color, spots, line, construction, dynamics. It was they who created the updated, modern version of Odesa 'South Russian' school.

They were cramped within the aesthetics of 'permissible' in the USSR, which is why they united in an informal club, organized apartment exhibitions, communicated with like-minded people who came from abroad, printed their works in samizdat and diaspora editions, and were under constant supervision of KGB who was afraid of everything independent and out of control.

The artists themselves repeatedly insisted that they did not consider themselves dissidents, that their purpose was creative freedom, not limited to the doctrinal attitudes of the Communist Party.

Viktor Maryniuk's range — from the early expressive experiments are consistent with the 'severe style' in the early sixties to the lyrical-geometric abstraction, organically combined with conditional linearity.

An integral part of Maryniuk's figurative system is his experience in monumental art. Hence — decorativism, generalization of forms and lines. Hence — a deep interest in the tradition of the monumental art of the school of Mykhailo Boichuk, combined with his experience of both Ukrainian folklore and contemporary European trends.

Among the artists of the Odesa group Viktor Maryniuk is distinguished by a special, delicate attitude to form and plastic.

Meaningful content is hiding behind the external conditionality. The combination of one's own reflections and experiences with the primal, deep values of being human creates an unsettling, irrational, at the same time, intellectual and comprehended reality. In the modern world, where art reaches a level without personality, Maryniuk's creativity, with its emphasis on what makes us human, remains the untouchable zone of humanity. The artist paints a personality, his particular individualism, self-esteem and self-confidence. Simple motifs are filled with tension and tranquility, ephemerality and fundamentality, uniqueness and mystery.

Achieving harmony is due to the nervous tension of the pulsating lines. Spectacular white space, the lines turn into a light outline. The impulse red spot enhances impression and perception. The earthly woman acquires a mythological depth. With minimal plastic means the artist expresses and elevates the woman, sacralised her image. So simple, without superfluous external efficacy, makes a woman the center of her universe.