# Karlo Zvirynsky

Karl Yosifovich Zvirinsky (Ukrainian: Karlo Yosipovich Zvirinsky; August 14, 1923, Lavrov village, (now Stary Sambir district, Lviv region of Ukraine) - October 8, 1997, Lviv) was a Ukrainian and Soviet artist and teacher.

## Biography

K. Zvirinsky received his primary 4-grade education at the Lavrov Basilian Monastery of St. Onuphrius. In 1942, having read an advertisement in a newspaper about the recruitment of students to the German art and industrial school, which operated a Ukrainian graphics department, he went to Lviv. By that time, the future artist was not interested in painting. Due to insufficient education for admission, he takes exams externally for a seven-year school.
During this period, many artists in Lviv fled the hardships of the war from the east of Ukraine. V. G. Krichevsky, N. G. Butovich, V. A. Balyas, R. Yu. Selsky taught here, Zvirinsky graduated from a painting course in 1946 and subsequently became friends with him.
Later he continued his studies at the department of monumental painting at the Lviv Institute of Decorative and Applied Arts (now the Lviv National Academy of Arts). In 1949, Zvirinsky was expelled for a year for the phrase he expressed:
   One Cezanne apple is worth more than all the art of socialist realism taken together
In 1953, he began teaching painting and composition at the Lviv Institute of Decorative and Applied Arts.

## Educational activities

Zvirinsky began to pass on his knowledge to the students of the Lvov Institute of Decorative and Applied Arts, grouping around himself a small team, which would eventually be called the “Karl Zvirinsky Academy.” It was a kind of home art school. The listeners were the later famous painters A. A. Bokotey (now rector of the Lviv Academy of Arts), E. N. Lysik (People's Artist of the Ukrainian SSR), Y. N. Motyka (winner of the Shevchenko Prize in 1972) and many others.
In addition, for a long time K. Zvirinsky headed the school of icon painting named after. St. Luke at the monastery of the Studite Order in Lavrov.

## Art

Abstract artist. I began my search for my own creative path in abstract art by studying appliqué. In the 1960s, the artist justified his departure into the abstract space of painting, appliqué, colored paper or wood relief on canvas as an escape from socialist realism, while at the same time not denying the achievements of the great realists.
In his works, he created a kind of parallel reality, an extremely integral world. This worldview is already distinguished by his compositions of the late 1950s, created using wood, tin, cardboard, and cord.
In the creative heritage of Karl Zvirinsky, however, the predominant part of the works is sacred painting. He painted about 40 icons for the Assumption Church in Lviv, and created frescoes in several churches near Lviv.

## Works

* “Relief III” (1957, composition composed of square and rectangular wooden blocks covered with layers of blue and purple paint)
* “Composition-II” (1960, canvas, plaster)
* triptych “Earth. Landscape after the battle. Epitaph" (1962)
* "Otherworldly"
* "Compositions X" (1970)

## Literature

* Pavelchuk I. The flows of abstract creativity of Karl Zvirinsky // Imaginative mysticism: writing of hours nourished by history, theory, ideology, methodology, artistic nationality, aesthetics, Ukrainian education. mis / National Collection of Artists of Ukraine. — Kiev, 2010. — No. 4 (76) “2010/ 1 (77)” 2011. — P. 74–77. — ISSN 0130-1799 Karlo Zvirinsky 1923-1997: Pogadi, statti, painting / Order. T. Pechenko, H. Zvirinska. — Lviv: Malti-M, 2002. (Ukrainian) Bubnovska Bozhena. Lviv school of painting: stages of molding // ArtUkraine. — No. 5 (6). - 2008. - P.9-16. (Ukrainian) Olga Lagutenko, “The Great Hierarchy.” Newspaper "Capital News" No. 5 (201) February 12–18, 2002.