Myroslav Yagoda

Born to a peasant family, he graduated from school in the village of Girnyk in the Lviv Oblast. After school he studied at the Chervonograd Mining College (even though he never graduated), and in 1975–1977 served in the Soviet army.

In 1980 he came to Lviv, and in 1981-1987 studied in the Ukrainian Institute of Printing (specialization in Graphics Arts), while also painting village churches for a living.

He gradually entered the Lviv art scene, but remained on the sidelines with his rather secluded life. He participated in exhibitions and art events in Lviv, Kyiv, Odessa, Kharkiv, but mostly abroad — in Poland, Austria, Hungary, and Germany. In 2001 he worked in Graz (Austria) as a fellow of the International Cultural City Network program. By the late 1980s, he became a true cult figure of the Ukrainian art underground.[2]

He died in his studio in Lviv on March 11, 2018.

M. Yagoda near his studio. 1999

Drawing has always been an important part of Yagoda's life.[lower-alpha 2] He proclaimed his artistic credo — already well formed and deeply experienced — in his manifesto "The Barbarian Trinity": "... an artist must ask a question to find himself and go to history ... Get out of the picture, beyond that, then make the move to the Universe. Brushes are hidden in the head. The glimmer of the picture is increasingly absorbed out of consciousness, as a nourishment for the subconscious Me. In the painting, its multi-dimensionality is realized through intrinsic actions”.[4]

The phenomenon of Yagoda's visual art — that features high integrity and extremely broad diversity, from surface fixation of boundary states to complexly metaphysical canvases — can be divided into two main periods:

1. The early 1990s: mostly introspective (inward-looking) period when the artist delved into his experiences and feelings, when the most important thing was the creative act itself as well as the deep emotions and the mental states associated with them. Therefore, the canvas or graphics that were produced in this creative act were rather secondary and not very well preserved at that. “In order to draw, an experience is badly needed, a terrible experience. I'm not interested in painting as a product". The paintings and graphics of this period are characterized by an expressive composition ("destruction is a paradoxical concept of harmony"[5]) and a "psychedelic" mood, mainly "star" compositions dominated by black color. At that time the drawing was also a certain therapy for the artist, to coop with his mental disorder.
2. The later 2000s: mostly extrospective (outward-looking) period, when the artist intensified his dialogue with the world, presenting his visions and sharing his experiences. In this "semiotic" period, the artist still did not portray the realities of the world, but invented a specific visual language and shifted to a "more intellectual, and therefore more restrained, almost aphoristic manner".[6] His picturesque style has also changed — "the color becomes extremely bright ... there is a kind of tranquility in the scenes, expressed in static compositions and a quiet smear".[7]
   Just then the framework of purely visual medium became too narrow for the artist: he broadened his poetic perception to also include language (prose and poetry) and theater (plays and set design).

As a whole, all of Yagoda's visual art was creating of a kind of "mental mirrors": "I paint my world so that those who have watched it may find what is inside them".[8] In a broad context, Yagoda's painting continues the European expressionist line of Goya — Munk — Bacon with its tragic worldview, the perception of the world as a territory of horror, the anticipation of catastrophe, the grotesque and the mysticism.[9]

Yagoda's graphics and paintings were used for the design of prints, such as the literary almanac "The Royal Forest", "Fronda" journal, "Gabriel's Book", and "Kremniuk" samizdat magazine.

Complementing his visual art work with prose and poetic creativity, Yahoda was not satisfied with traditional means and "extracted the blood of words"[10] - creating his own aphoristic language with particular sounds and neologisms, stylistic figures, intonation and the author's emphasis on words. This is how he brought the reader into his imaginative worlds, semantic fields and feelings.

Performance "Fishing — A Mirror Image". Warsaw, 2005

In 1991, for the first time, Yagoda published a selection of his poetry "Madhouse" in the "Avzez" ("Indeed") magazine №6, in 1992 - in the "Kremniuk" samizdat magazine. Later on, he published (at his own expense, with financial assistance from friends) four poetry books: "Chereposlov" (2002), "Distance Zero" (2006), "Let's Shinee" (2008), and "Parallel Worlds" (2011), which he publicly presented. His poems have been translated into Polish and German.

In 1997 Yagoda published his novel "The War of Small Cruel Numbers" (with the avant-garde "broken" writing technique), as a Ukrainian reminiscence of G. Heine's "Ideas. Le Grand".[11]

In 2005 Yagoda participated in the program of the New Ukrainian Art Festival "24 hours.UA" at the De Novo International Art Symposium at the Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski (Warsaw, Poland). He conducted a poetic reading of "Berries of All Countries, Unite!" and a performance of "Fish — A Mirror Image".

In 2008, Yagoda took part in the project "Ecclesiastes of Another Alphabet" in the "Mezzanine" art studio in Kiev where he presented his artistic manifesto "The Barbarian Trinity".

Since the 2000s Yagoda complemented his art with playwright and set design that became another means and an additional language to describe the spaces and worlds of his "semiotic" period.

In 2000, his play "Nothing" was published in the literary almanac "The Royal Forest". In 2002, director Maria Veres put on the play "Nothing" (with the script and set design by Yagoda) in the "Sky Theater" which took place on the premises of the Maria Zankovetska Theatre.

Yagoda closely collaborated with Atilla Vidnyanszky, then Transcarpathian director. In 2001, they co-created the set design for the play "The Winter Tale" based on the works of William Shakespeare, that was performed in the National Theater in Budapest. In 2003 A.Vidnyanszky put on Yagoda's play "Nothing" (in Hungarian) at the Transcarpathian Regional Hungarian Drama Theater in Berehove. They also worked jointly on two more plays — "Dziady" by Adam Mickiewicz in the Beregovsky Theater (2001), and "Shakespeare's Wreath" at the Gyula Castle Theatre (2005).

Based on Yagoda's poetry, a one-man show "The Road to Light" was staged in Lviv in 2010.

By the early 2000s, Yagoda's art was more often exhibited abroad than in Lviv. He very selectively participated in group exhibitions — both the artist himself and the curators preferred to present his original art individually.

M. Yagoda with his painting "The Green Dog - Guardian of the Dead". 1991

• M. Yagoda's Page in ArtLvivOnline
• The Virtual Gallery of Myroslav Yagoda
• Works by Myroslav Yagoda in the Grynyov Art Collection