Ivan Marchuk

Ivan Marchuk is an Ukrainian artist who was born in 1936 in the Soviet Period. In 1956-1965 he studied at the Lviv College of Decorative and Applied Arts. Since 1965 he lived and worked in Kyiv. Without official recognition in Soviet Ukraine and while he was not admitted to the Union of Artists, Marchuk gained fame as the informal leader of the Ukrainian artistic underground. In 1988 he emigrated to Australia, then lived in Canada and the United States, where he received wide recognition. In 1990 Marchuk visited Ukraine for his first official exhibition in Kyiv in the Ukrainian State Art Museum of Fine Arts, now the National Art Museum of Ukraine. In 1996 Ivan Marchuk became People’s Artist of Ukraine. In 1997 he won the national award of Taras Shevchenko. In 2001 Marchuk returned to Ukraine. In 2006 the International Academy of Modern Art in Rome included Marchuk in the ‘Golden Guild’ as an honorary member of the Scientific Council of the Academy. Today the ‘Golden Guild’ includes 51 artists from all over the world. In 2007 Ivan Marchuk was included in the list of ‘A hundred geniuses of our time’ by the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph. Ivan Marchuk lives and works in Kiev.