Kateryna Lysovenko

Kateryna Lysovenko (b. 1989, Kyiv) is one of the most critically acclaimed young painters in Ukraine. Her unique style takes clear influence from Ukrainian naïve art and socialist realist art, deeply rooted in her understanding of painting traditions and techniques from her education in both classical and contemporary art in Odessa and Kyiv. Over a wide array of subject matter, including Christian iconography and classical myths, Lysovenko paints gentle portraits of loneliness. 

Often, the artist’s work focuses on victimhood, a subject matter which has only grown in frequency and poignancy since the full-scale invasion of her home country. The war is not the only struggle Lysovenko turns her attention towards, and as Maximilian Lehner writes for Artforum in a review of the artist’s most recent solo show in Bucharest: “Lysovenko treats her canvases like classical topoi, so that their iconography can easily stand for other struggles.”

Sonya: A Sunflower Network Project presents a suite of 6 watercolor paintings made especially for the exhibition, a series entitled 6 unfortunately, mundane, inappropriately beautiful scenes. The works are typical of Lysovenko’s oeuvre, featuring a muted color palette with sudden pops of color and blob-like human forms that use the medium of watercolor to its fullest extent. There is a certain serenity to Lysovenko’s paintings, a calmness instilled even in war-inspired images of abandoned buildings in barren landscapes, corpses being discovered, and flowers strewn on the floor. There is an immediately recognizable quality present in the work, a childlike naivety paired with a deep understanding and references to world and history history.

Extremely well regarded in her home country, Lysovenko has exhibited throughout Ukraine and in 2022 had her first solo international shows in Poland and Bucharest.