Biography
Oleh Mykolayovych Holosiy (1965, Dnipro – 1993, Kyiv) was a painter.
1984 – Graduated from the Dnipropetrovsk State Art College named after Y. Vuchetych, studying in the studio of Leonid Antoniuk.
1990 – Graduated from the Kyiv State Art Institute, Faculty of Monumental Painting.
1990–1993 – Member of the Kyiv art group Paris Commune [Parkommuna].
From 1988 – Participant in numerous national and international exhibitions, including Shtyl (Calm) (1992, Kyiv), Postanesthesia (1992, Munich, Germany), Dialogue with Kyiv (1993, Munich, Germany), Angels over Ukraine (1993, Edinburgh, Scotland), and Steppes of Europe (1993, Warsaw, Poland).
From the late 1980s – Collaborated with the Moscow gallery Regina, where his solo exhibition Independent Art took place in 1991.
1989, 1991 – Participant in young artists’ plein air workshops in Sednev under the leadership of Tiberiy Silvashi and Oleksandr Soloviov.
Lived and worked in Kyiv.
One of the key representatives of the Ukrainian New Wave and Ukrainian Transavantgarde, Holosiy was a member of the Paris Commune art group. “To live without ‘whys’ and ‘whats for,’ in self-forgetful, heartfelt sincerity of expression”—these words by Oleh Holosiy capture his personality perhaps better than any other. “For him, painting was an element that consumed him entirely, down to the core. The character of his works reflects a premonition of early death and an urgent desire to accomplish everything in time. Over the course of his short life, he created around three hundred large-format canvases. He could paint with a broom or any other makeshift tools, using house paint without adhering to technical rules; the main thing for him was the here and now,” wrote art critic and curator Oleksandr Soloviov.
Holosiy’s painting of the late 1980s is “expressive, featuring a thick, impasto brushstroke and a vibrant, somewhat aggressive palette. His canvases are charged with art-historical quotations, intense and profound imagery, and allusions to religious subjects. These images provided the artist with a means to articulate his own fears and anxieties connected with rapid changes and turbulence” (Olesia Avramenko).
