At 80, painter Anatoliy Kryvolap reflects on becoming one of Ukraine's most valuable artists
Ahead of his 80th birthday, one of contemporary Ukraine's best-known and priciest painters, Anatoliy Kryvolap, recounts his path from poverty to acclaim. He has also donated nearly half a million dollars to Ukraine's armed forces since 2022.
Anatoliy Kryvolap, approaching his 80th birthday, ranks among the most recognized and commercially successful contemporary Ukrainian painters. His 2013 work "Horse. Evening" sold at auction for a record $186,000. Since the early 2000s, his creative home has been the village of Zasupoivka near Yahotyn, where he lives and works.
From abstraction to landscape
Between 1990 and 2000, Kryvolap produced abstract works, but eventually felt an inner emptiness and sought solitude in the countryside. In Zasupoivka he developed a new landscape language that art critics describe as meditative, rooted in deep exploration of color and mood. He considers this period his "third birth," following his childhood in Yahotyn and years working in a converted boiler-room studio in Kyiv's Nyvky district.
Childhood and path to art
Kryvolap grew up in a harsh, gloomy environment he describes as colorless, which he says fueled his craving for vivid colors and natural scenery. At 14 he traveled to Kyiv to enter an art school but arrived too late for the entrance exams; he stayed anyway, completing evening school and studying at art studios. During his years at the Kyiv Art Institute he gained an academic foundation, while learning on his own to temper his impulsive temperament.
From poverty to recognition
Until 1990, Kryvolap lived on very little, refusing to earn money from painting until he considered himself a true professional colorist. His fortunes changed when a bank purchased 15 of his works, and later a German company began collaborating with him, paying sums unheard of in Ukraine at the time. Between 2010 and 2015, collectors bought 18 of his paintings at auction for a combined total of roughly $770,000.
Since 2022, the artist has donated nearly half a million dollars to Ukraine's armed forces, speaking about it matter-of-factly and without drawing attention to the gesture.
