Oleg Minko

Oleg Terentiyovych Minko (; August 3, 1938 – November 20, 2013) was a Ukrainian painter and art teacher, belonging to the Lviv school of artistic expression. He was awarded the rank of 'Honoured Artist Of Ukraine' by the state and was considered to be one of the most established and rated artists in the country.

Early life and education

Minko was born in Makiivka, Donetsk Oblast, Ukrainian SSR. During World War II, Minko's family moved to the Nosachi village in Cherkassy Oblast, where Minko's father came from. In 1944, they returned to Makiivka. His mother Antonina Andriivna worked as an accountant in the "Makiivbud" trust. His father Terentiy Ivanovych was an economist in the machine shop at the Makiivka Metallurgical Plant. After school, Oleg graduated from the Makiivka metallurgical technical training school.

From early childhood, Oleg loved to draw and dreamed of becoming a painter. According to his family history, Oleg's great grandfather was an icon painter.

In 1959, Oleg Minko enrolled into the Department of artistic weaving at the Lviv State Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts (now Lviv National Academy of Arts). His professors were the painters Roman Selskyi and Carlo Zvirynskyi.

Career After graduating in 1965, he worked as a weaving shop foreman in the Lviv Art-Production Enterprise; within five years, he became the head of that shop. From 1971 to 1982, he worked as a painter of the monumental shop of the Lviv Art-Production Enterprise. From 1982 until his death in 2013, Minko worked as senior professor and head of the sub-department of artistic tapestry at the Lviv State Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts.

From 1967 to 1969, he created a series of works entitled "Zhyttia masok" (The Life of Masks). During this period, historical and social subjects became the main focus of his creative research. He experimented with the human figure within the pictorial space of his paintings and, through the use of symbolism, tried to express his outrage at what he perceived was wrong in the then-communist, totalitarian government he lived under.

In 1970, Minko became a member of the Painters' Association. —exhibited works at the Lviv Picture Gallery. "The Exhibition of three" ("Vystavka triokh") was described as "a sip of pure spring water" in the artistic environment.

After the success of this exhibition (not only in Lviv, but also in Kyiv, Vilnius and Moscow), Minko, Flinta and Medvid were awarded the rank of "Honoured Artists of Ukraine".

Third period (late 1980s–early 1990s) A "returning to the origins" started in the late 1980s and lasted into the early 1990s. Minko, having developed his mature artistic style, finally felt he could properly express himself, drawing on his world outlook, internal experiences and visual language. He brought new elements and unique formal solutions to his works, creating an original world where his characters existed in the past, present and future, either simultaneously or in parallel dimensions.

2009 This year marked 50 years worth of artworks as Minko continued to work as a painter and a professor. He started work on a new series called "Znykli tsyvilizazii" (The Lost Civilizations), which featured motifs that expressed the artist's existential emotions towards the future of humanity.