Orest Kuziv
Орест Кузів
b. 1997 · Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine
Orest Kuziv is a Ukrainian painter born in 1997 in Ivano-Frankivsk, and a member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine. Working chiefly in oil, he is known for nocturnal landscapes and for a long-running series of paintings of haystacks. He describes himself as an impressionist and has produced more than a thousand works.
Orest-Vasyl Bohdanovych Kuziv was born on 13 January 1997 in Ivano-Frankivsk into a family of artists; his father, Bohdan Kuziv, is also a painter, and the two held a joint exhibition in 2013. Kuziv took a bachelor's degree in fine art and restoration at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kyiv in 2018, studying under the People's Artist of Ukraine Vasyl Zabashta, and completed a master's degree at the Lviv National Academy of Arts in 2020. He is a member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine and is credited with over a thousand paintings, held in private collections in Ukraine, Germany and the United States. His recurring subjects are haystacks, willows, sacred motifs and night scenes, treated with heavy impasto and a strong interest in artificial and moonlit colour. His fifth solo exhibition, «Копички» (Haystacks), opened at the Bastion gallery in Ivano-Frankivsk on 2 August 2020 with twenty-four canvases painted during the COVID-19 lockdown, ranging from large formats down to five-centimetre miniatures, and included a life-size straw haystack installed in the middle of the gallery. Further solo shows followed, among them «Магія ночі» (Magic of the Night) and «Мій світ» (My World), the latter shown in Kyiv in November 2024. He received the Serhii Vasylkivskyi international art prize in 2021, the Yaroslav Lukavetskyi regional prize for visual art in 2023, and the order "For the Development of Ukraine" in 2020. Since Russia's full-scale invasion he has sold his paintings to raise funds for the Ukrainian armed forces.
Portrait: photograph sourced from pik.net.ua. © the photographer / rights holder; shown for editorial purposes. Contact us for attribution or removal.
Art Movements
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century French art movement (1870s-1880s) that revolutionized Western art by capturing fleeting moments and the shifting effects of light using visible brushstrokes, open composition, and vibrant colors. Focusing on modern life and landscapes, key artists included Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, and Berthe Morisot. Usage Examples & Characteristics: Plein Air Painting: Painting outdoors to capture natural light, such as Monet’s studies of Rouen Cathedral or haystacks in varying weather conditions. Visible Brushwork: Thick, rapid, or broken brushstrokes intended to convey a sense of motion and the ephemeral nature of a scene. Everyday Subjects: Depicting leisure activities, urban life in Paris, or landscapes rather than historical or mythological scenes. Unusual Visual Angles: Inspired by photography, artists like Degas used candid-style, unconventional framing of subjects, such as dancers or laundresses. "Impressionist Music": A similar approach in music and dance, focusing on mood and atmosphere over rigid structure, with artists like Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.
Explore movement →1991–presentContemporary Ukrainian Painting
Painting made in independent Ukraine, from the 1991 declaration of independence onward. It is pluralist rather than programmatic: plein-air landscape and psychological portraiture continue alongside conceptual, minimalist and symbolist strands, with a marked turn after 2014 and especially after 2022 toward wartime subjects, national memory and the vernacular Ukrainian village.
Explore movement →Works by Orest Kuziv
Bonfire
A night scene in which a single flame cuts through surrounding darkness, one of the artist's characteristic studies of artificial light. The gallery reads the fire as a sign of life, warmth and renewal.
Evening Kyiv
A small nocturne of historic Kyiv built on the contrast between warm evening light and deep night tones. The composition is deliberately spare, with light and shadow carrying most of the picture.