Biography
Ihor Hryhorovych Skorupskyi (1948, Nadvirna, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast – 2014, Khmelnytskyi) was a graphic artist, painter, designer, and museum exhibition architect.
1960s – Studied at the Dolyna Children’s Art Studio under Ivan Huralevych.
1967–1973 – Studied at the Ivan Trush Lviv College of Applied Arts, specializing as a display artist / designer.
1973 – Began working at the Khmelnytskyi Branch of the Art Fund of Ukraine, where he was the sole certified designer at the time.
1975 – Participant in regional and international exhibitions. Held solo exhibitions in Gdańsk, Poland (1995), Albstadt, Germany (1995, 1997), Ravensburg, Germany (1998, 2001), and Reutlingen, Germany (2002).
1979 – Awarded the Leninist Komsomol Prize for designing the Mykola Ostrovsky Museum in Shepetivka, Khmelnytskyi Oblast.
1985 – Became a member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine.
1985 – Designer of the Museum of Zaporozhian Cossackery on Khortytsia Island.
1986 – 1992 – Member of the architectural team responsible for the reconstruction of the Khmelnytskyi Regional Art Museum building.
1995 – Member of the Ploskyi Riv creative association of Podillia artists (including Olena Skorupska, Serhii Kravets, and Andrii Isaiev).
2007 – Laureate of the Bohdan Khmelnytskyi Municipal Award.
Lived and worked in Khmelnytskyi.
Skorupskyi began drawing at the age of eight, tutored by his father, an amateur artist. Upon graduating from the Lviv College of Applied Arts with an unrestricted diploma (which allowed him to choose his placement), he settled in Khmelnytskyi, his wife’s hometown. Until the early 1990s, he focused primarily on exhibition and interior design. As the state commission system of the Art Fund of Ukraine collapsed in the late 1980s, Skorupskyi devoted himself more fully to painting.
“Display artists and designers were left virtually unemployed. Everyone survived as best they could—some retrained, while others became art managers. ‘I had to take up painting seriously, though I used to find solace at the easel before as well,’ the artist admits, showing his still lifes, landscapes, and panels. Even a casual glance at Skorupskyi’s canvases reveals the breath and thematic variety of his imagery, sparking associations and memories of past experiences. These are symbolic paintings with a philosophical undertone, some broadly autobiographical,” wrote journalist Mykola Kulbovskyi in a 2003 essay on the artist.
