Andriy Sagaidakovskyi is a prominent representative of the Lviv cultural environment at the end of the Soviet era and the times of Ukraine’s independence. He belongs to those artists who began their practice with almost fully formed plastic and philosophical concepts, which over the years change only slightly and layer additional visual codes and semantic constructions.
Sagaidakovskyi studied at the Faculty of Architecture of the Lviv Polytechnic Institute and followed in the footsteps of his architect father. However, only to obtain a diploma, he never worked in the profession afterwards. Instead, he learned visual thinking and painting skills in private studios of iconic Lviv artists — drawing and color with Karl Zvirynskyi, and composition with Roman Selskyi [1]. Due to his excessively material, even dirty manner of painting and organizing the artistic process, Sagaidakovskyi is often identified with the British expressionist artist Francis Bacon. According to Sagaidakovskyi, Bacon also did not invent life in art but affirmed it as a “disgusting coagulation of time” [1].
His recognizable style, aesthetics, and themes were formed at the intersection of political and social systems — the collapse of the Soviet Union and the restoration of Ukraine’s independence; at the intersection of aesthetic doctrines — academic artistic tradition and the corpus of classical art as a reference for artistic practice; as well as at the intersection of economic circumstances, which manifested in the reuse of elements of everyday life as an aesthetic and ideological unit of artistic practice.
The themes of Sagaidakovskyi’s works unfold in the plane of polemics with the classical heritage of world art and the socialist realist heritage of the totalitarian USSR regime. As a typical representative of the “1987 generation,” Andriy Sagaidakovskyi fully corresponds to those external circumstances and development directions under which an entire generation “…based on the traumatic experience of Soviet-style ideological control, professed ideas of freedom and intuitiveness in art, conducted postmodernist games with meanings, and avoided direct political involvement” [2].
Sagaidakovskyi’s artistic practice is characterized by cyclicality; he repeatedly returns to several thematic directions that form his iconic cycles and include various series. A significant part of his practice is autobiographical and leans towards reflexivity, expanded to a universal and generalized metaphor of several generations at the turn of epochs.
Throughout his creative career, painting has dominated his art. He paints mostly spontaneously, which also makes it unlikely to attribute his artworks precisely, as Sagaidakovskyi deliberately does not indicate the year of creation. He also consistently declares the non-commercial nature of his work (“art for art’s sake”), so he does not track the circulation of his works after creation. At present, it is difficult to establish the whereabouts of many works, especially from the early period (late 1980s – early 1990s), which dispersed among private collections and exhibitions during Perestroika and the collapse of the USSR.
A significant part of the painting legacy is the “Academic Discourse,” which includes the following cycles: “Studies” (author’s name for his abstract works), “Dialogue with the Classics,” “Anatomy Studies,” and “Landscape.” As Lviv art historian Bohdan Shumilovych notes: “… in Sagaidakovskyi’s painting… there is noticeable use of high modernism techniques (post-Dada or Pop Art, Fluxus, absurdism, surrealism, or alogism) to transform the traditional image into a thesis image and a copy of a source archetype that no longer exists…” [3].
Another large direction is the discourse of “Archaeology of Memory,” which includes the cycles: “Vegetation,” “The Path to Health and Beauty,” and “Happy Life.” The socio-critical layer of painting in this direction is a product of the author’s “digestion” of stereotypes rooted in the mass consciousness of his generation about forced Soviet ideology and memories of primitive everyday realities. The author himself states: “I am a kind of realist. I live in the society I lived in; it has not changed much since the ‘Soviet’ times. That old ‘Soviet’ mentality has remained the same” [4].
A distinctive feature of the author’s creative manner is painting on old carpets. Andriy Sagaidakovskyi began using old carpets instead of canvas in the difficult 1990s when there was a lack of money for professional materials. He liked the texture of the base, often destroyed by time and storage conditions, which added a backstory of experience and continuity in time to the future work. Another recognizable component of Sagaidakovskyi’s artistic method is the use of text in his works. The text exists in two forms: stencil and handwritten. “I use stencils when something must be indisputable. ‘Tomorrow we will be happy!’ must be a stencil. ‘Look! Don’t get lost’ is handwritten; here the fortune teller is divided,” explains the author [5].
The type of Sagaidakovskyi’s artistic practice can be characterized as intuitive. The author is guided by an inner impulse that arises in resonance with an idea, thought, or external stimulus. According to his own account, he began introducing text into his paintings borrowing the icon-painting tradition of explaining images with texts (at the beginning of his career, he made a living painting icons), and partly to exclude any ambiguities in interpreting the content of the work. His artistic practice does not imply authorial concepts or additional articulations regarding the meanings of particular symbols or visual codes. He refuses to comment on the ideas and meanings of his works; instead, he embeds the metaphorical content of the works in laconic inscriptions on the painting surface, which becomes either part of the composition or the central visual-associative element of the image itself. Sagaidakovskyi says: “People started asking me what I wanted to say with this or that work. I then say: let me just write… So there are no misunderstandings. These are legs, and that is a face. So I say: can you read? Please — read” [6].
Overall, Andriy Sagaidakovskyi’s practice is not clearly divided by media; it is fluid and spontaneous. The author evidently leans towards classical forms such as painting and objecthood. However, in the artistic environment, he is recognized not by manner, painting style, or artistic expressiveness, but by the method of working with the chosen theme and image. It is accurate to characterize his method as a “lifelong art practice.” In a review of Andriy Sagaidakovskyi’s large-scale and milestone solo project at the Mystetskyi Arsenal, Tetiana Kochubinska described his legacy as “… a single integral continuous flow of sensations, experiences, and associations” [7]. The tangibility of ideas and themes the artist equally vividly embodies both in painting, which, like a palimpsest, layers historical and social context with the materiality of the painting medium; and in objects, installations, and actions that he realizes spontaneously and intuitively from everyday household materials without additional production. This choice of materials for artistic expressiveness echoes Arte Povera in the Ukrainian artistic tradition, whose predecessors were Fedir Tetyanych (Fripulia), Yurii Zmorovych, and others.
Sagaidakovskyi in the Ukrainian artistic field is an author methodically engaged in reworking the past: in the form of stereotypes, traumas, and stamps of Soviet upbringing and mentality, involving material forms of used household items and utensils, which he takes as the basis of artistic expressiveness. With his legacy, the artist records and preserves the transitional stage of Ukrainian history between the Soviet and post-Soviet heritage to the postcolonial Ukrainian reality.
*materials by Nataliya Kosmolinska and Tetiana Kochubinska were used in the text
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[1] Filonenko B. Andriy Sagaidakovskyi, here-being. A view from the studio // Andriy Sagaidakovskyi. Decorations. Welcome! – Kyiv: SE “NCMCC “Mystetskyi Arsenal””, 2020. — P.77
[2] Zlobina T. Contemporary art at the border of the first and second worlds //Spilne, No.7, 2014: Second World.
[3] Bohdan Shumilovych, annotation to the project of Andriy Sagaidakovskyi and Andriy Boyarov “Voids”, (curators: Vita Susak and Bohdan Shumilovych), Lviv National Art Gallery, Lviv, Ukraine, 2013.
[4] Zvizhynskyi A. Kostya Smolyaninov’s blog: Andriy Sagaidakovskyi. — 2011 [Electronic resource]. — Access mode: http://smolyaninow.livejournal.com/385561.html
[5] Susak V. Voids — this is an opportunity // Zaxid.net. — 2013 [Electronic resource]. — Access mode: http://zaxid.net/news/showNews.do?andriy_sagaydakovskiy_pustoti__tse_mozhlivist&objectId=1290754
[6] Ozírna Zh. Art will not change people // Koridor. — 31.07.2012 [Electronic resource]. — Access mode: http://old.korydor.in.ua/interviews/1141-mistetstvo-ne-zminit-lyude
[7] Kochubinska T. (NOT) SERIOUS GAMES. About the exhibition of Andriy Sagaidakovskyi at Mystetskyi Arsenal // YourArt. – 18.11.2020 [Electronic resource]. – Access mode: https://supportyourart.com/columns/neserjozni-ihry/
[8] V. Hanzha. Exhibitions: announcements of art events in Ukraine // Art Ukraine. — 2012. — No5 (29–30), pp. 30–32
[9] I. Kovalenko. The dark side of the palette // Domus design. — 2011. — No3. — p. 28
[10] Happy life according to Sagaidakovskyi // Art Ukraine. — 2009. — No2: March–April.— pp. 184–185
[11] Komarnytska Lusia. Archive of the marginal // Domus design. — 2005. — No6. — p. 40
[12] Mynko Yevhenii. The absurdity of the present (Project of Andriy Sagaidakovskyi “Imitation of Reality”) // Domus design. — 2004. — No3. — p. 41
[13] Profile of Andriy Sagaidakovskyi in the “Open Archive” database. Authors Lizaveta Herman and Mariya Lanko. — 11.09.2021 [Electronic resource]. — Access mode: http://openarchive.com.ua/sagaydakovskiy/#practice92Comment type: Summary
Author: Halyna Hleba
