Myroslav Yahoda is a key figure of the Lviv underground and a solitary artist, a madman and a genius. In his paintings, visions of the apocalypse change into eerie tranquility, and death is inextricably linked with birth. Tanya Zhmurko tells about the work of the mysterious master.
“I want to paint the groan of the Earth,” wrote Myroslav Yahoda in his manifesto “Trinity of Barbarians.” From his canvases, numerous drawings, and texts, a painful cry of the unbearable human existence resounds. It is embedded in the very brushstroke — expressive, impasto — or the drawing line — trembling, fragile, tangled.
Myroslav Yahoda’s work resembles a collapse, a steep descent, or even a fall, realizing the inevitable danger but unable to stop. His images — of apocalypse, demons, the strange “Tsypa devouring her tribe” — emerge from chthonic darkness, captivate, and do not let go.
Loneliness and fungus
The artist was born in a small village Hirnyk near Lviv, graduated from the Ivan Fedorov Ukrainian Printing Institute (now the Ukrainian Academy of Printing). His creative formation took place at the end of the 1980s — a time of cultural environment formation in Lviv: the first independent galleries, cultural magazines, festivals, contemporary art exhibitions. But Yahoda seemed to stand apart, a solitary artist. He locked himself in a small semi-basement studio — dusty, smoky, cluttered with books and canvases — and worked for long hours.
He treated his canvases as carelessly as life itself: they were piled up or nailed to the wall, outlining the artist’s existence. Editor and cultural expert Taras Voznyak recalled: “He easily took [his works] off the stretchers — because he simply had no others. Later this became his trademark style. Just as the fungus that devours these fantastic canvases, the craquelure, the cracks covering the canvases became a ‘trademark style,’ because Myroslav treated them mercilessly, almost fiercely, as unwanted witnesses […] of deeds he wanted to hide as soon as possible.”
Otherness is often understood as abnormality and rarely forgiven — Yahoda became for many a “strange recluse.” Stories about him usually begin not with a description of his work but with definitions like “strange,” “marginal,” “abnormal.” But he is as marginal as any other talented artist who found his path and goes against the artistic mainstream.
A person who knows Nothing
Yahoda’s early canvases are distinguished by a particularly dense painted surface: on an impenetrable, almost black background, strange anthropomorphic beings are painted in an expressive manner — those who are bored, suffering, as if stuck in limbo. Almost bodiless, they wander from one work to another, living endless lives. It seems the artist frees them with his art.
Graphics gave even more opportunities for expression — it is no wonder Yahoda left hundreds of drawings done in ink or gel pen. The tangled black line tells its own story, somewhat reminiscent of Antonin Artaud’s works: just as in Artaud’s “body without organs” there are no specific body parts or zones of sexuality, so in Yahoda’s world there is no specific temporal localization — it is hard to say whether it was before birth or after. Everything is in fragmented tangled motion, his characters — entities — simultaneously “not yet born,” “alive,” and “dead.”
Yahoda’s works contain many allusions to religious motifs: “Black Madonna,” Christ with maddened eyes feeling all the pain of humanity, and Christian symbolism that resists easy interpretation. But the artist freely handles biblical plots, making them part of his world, inventing his own “iconography” and new mythologemes. Such is the “Matsyora Tsypa devouring her tribe” — half-demon, half-human, half-animal, with several faces, who simultaneously gives birth to and kills children. Who is she? A malicious mythical goddess devouring offspring, or a metaphor for modern society with its wars and quarrels?
The attempt to express Nothing runs through all of Yahoda’s work as an image of the other, the beyond, the unknown, the superpowerful. “Nothing looks through the paintings and from the side deals with your cosmic prey, like visions. That which goes beyond the horizon, that which entered the forbidden room in the palace — a person who knows Nothing,” wrote the artist.
The artist freely handles biblical plots, making them part of his world, inventing his own “iconography” and new mythologemes.
Don’t go far, everything is here
By the early 2000s, Yahoda became a sought-after author. At this time, his painting style changed — the color palette became extremely bright, and the images more resembled naive pictures, with local color and childlike simplified drawing. The plots gained some tranquility, expressed in static compositions and calm brushstrokes.
Yahoda became popular not only as an artist: his poems were gladly published in magazines, translated into Polish and German. The artist was invited to exhibitions abroad, where he was successful. At the Maria Zankovetska National Academic Drama Theater, his play “Nothing” was staged, which, according to the artist himself, was “about emptiness […] or the death of God.”
But despite his popularity, Yahoda did not abandon his usual way of life. He remained attached to Lviv and increasingly immersed himself in alcohol and solitude. His world narrowed and eventually was limited to a few dozen square meters of the studio where he lived and worked. “Lately, he treated himself as if he didn’t exist — there was only paper, canvas, paints, and everyday life — it didn’t matter,” recalls artist Mykhailo Krasnyk.
In Yahoda’s works, there is his beloved Lviv, a time of collapse, turmoil, and war. But at the same time, they are about something else — eternal and borderline, about a series of endless transformations, about the pain of birth, fear of death, and homeless hope.
