Biography
Dmytro Vadymovych Kavsan (1964, Kyiv – 2024, Kyiv) was a painter and installation artist.
From 1987 – Participant in numerous exhibitions in Ukraine and abroad (Kyiv, Bonn, Vienna).
1990–1994 – Member of the Paris Commune (Parkommuna) art group.
1991 – Graduated from the Kyiv State Art Institute, Faculty of Monumental Painting, studying in the studio of Mykola Storozhenko. Received private instruction from Anatoliy Lymariev and Viktor Zaretskyi.
2006 – Member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine (NUAU).
Lived and worked in Kyiv.
A prominent representative of Ukrainian Postmodernism, Kavsan created watercolors, prints, and silkscreens. He was the author of landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and thematic canvases in a realistic manner, while also working within the traditions of Transavantgarde, Postmodernism, Surrealism, Lyrical Abstraction, and Psychological Abstraction. “His works exhibit a ‘Dutch’ love for things, an English spleen, French affectation, romantic battelism, and realistic animalism” (Svitlana Petrovska).
Dmytro Kavsan was distinguished by his painterly mastery and deep knowledge of world history and art history. The artist’s paintings are life-affirming, marked by a bright palette and saturated with light. Art critic Oleksiy Titarenko called Kavsan “a person beyond currents and movements. He is a loner, a mad time traveler who does not fight for his place under the sun.” Most of his works prior to 1993 were created within the formal system of the Ukrainian Transavantgarde, characterized by an expressive painterly manner and psychedelic, historical, and mythological narratives.
The artist’s creative approach represents an ironic and vibrant illustration of the struggle between “rebellious” impulses of thought and traditional canonical dogmas. Kavsan sought to liberate his inner chimeras onto the canvas using techniques radically different from academic painting. “The incompatible becomes compatible,” the artist assured the viewer, “especially when it comes to the childlike ability to mix everything you truly like, everything you love. First in the imagination, and then on the canvas in a way whose persuasiveness is, so to speak, infectious: if nothing else, these subjects do not evoke detached surprise, leaving in its place something akin to pure delight at the contemplation of things and phenomena that are unconditionally, senselessly, purely, and unequivocally beautiful.”
