Biography
Born in 1948 in Ukraine, Vasiliy Sad began his artistic career in the 1970s. He was one of the very few non-conformist artists who kept his identity and his freedom of creative expression during socialism when art remained a safe tool to think without limitations. Sad took an active part in unofficial, so called "apartment exhibitions", but it was under Perestroika that he first gained wide-spread recognition.
From the late 1980s, Sad abandoned figurative art and moved to a pure abstraction. The painter of colour sensation and of meticulous brush strokes Vasiliy formulated his unique language where paintings are charged with an intense but calming feeling, where the Artist's reality is filling the canvas with small, crystalline elements, rendered in an expressive palette.
Sad believes that it is only with abstraction that one can to 'get through to the secrets of human existence and nature'. His paintings play with the emotions - from a distance they appear serene and meditative, but on closer inspection we see jerky, thickly-spread dots of pure energetic colour. Sad plays with abstractions in the manner of Richard Pousette-Dart or Mark Tobey, but also draws inspiration from real objects - from Carpathian craftsmanship like carpet-weaving, wood carving and Easter egg painting. His paintings seem as fragile as a lacework, but as strong as a ray of light slashing through layers of colours and textures. Abrupt, mottle brush strokes are creating flickering, breathing substance on a canvas.
Works by Artist are in Kiev Museum of Modern Fine Art, National Museum of Ukraine, Odessa Museum of Eastern and Western Art, and in private collections in America, UK, Italy, Monaco, Switzerland, Asia.
