Biography
Marko Stepanovych Heiko (1956, village of Stanislavchyk, Kyiv region – 2009, Kyiv) was a painter.
1985 — Graduated from the Kyiv State Art Institute. From then on, he was an active participant in regional, national, and international exhibitions.
1988 — Awarded the Marie Bashkirtseff Prize by the French Society of Artists (France).
1989 — Joined the National Union of Artists of Ukraine.
1991–1996 — Member of the artistic association Zhyvopysnyi Zapovidnyk (Pictorial Reserve), founded by Tiberiy Silvashi, which also included Oleksandr Zhyvotkov, Mykola Kryvenko, and Anatoliy Kryvolap.
Lived and worked in Kyiv.
Marko Heiko was a key representative of the Ukrainian “New Wave” and one of the patriarchs of contemporary Ukrainian painting. His works demonstrate a synthesis of abstraction, metaphysical thinking, and a profound color culture. Upon graduating from the Art Institute, he was assigned to work at the Poltava Art Factory, where he met the artist Lev Markosyan, who exerted a significant influence on the young master. Together with Markosyan, he is considered the co-creator of the new Poltava school of painting. Heiko was one of the leading figures in the legendary Zhyvopysnyi Zapovidnyk. Tiberiy Silvashi, the group’s founder, wrote:
“Within the ‘Reserve,’ we shared a certain consensus that our representational principle was non-mimetic. However, the models the artists drew inspiration from were different. As were the tools. We had no manifestos. […] We were not so much ‘updating’ the artistic language as ‘building bridges’ to the practices that Ukraine had missed out on. This provided a foundation and direction for practices that would enter art later. Our idea—then not yet fully formulated—was not to ‘construct’ a ‘mirror’ principle out of cultural archives, but to attempt to reach the very foundations of visual language. Returning to the fundamentals of painting—that was the core idea of the ‘Reserve.'”
