Magical realism
Magical realism is a genre of literature, art, and film that incorporates fantastic, mythical, or surreal elements into otherwise realistic, mundane narratives, treating the magical as normal. It blurs the boundary between reality and fantasy, often used to explore complex social, political, or postcolonial themes through a dreamlike lens. Key Aspects and Characteristics Realistic Setting: Stories are rooted in the real world (e.g., bustling cities, quiet villages), not fantasy realms. Normalised Magic: Strange occurrences are accepted by characters without surprise or terror. Hybridity: Often blends folklore, myths, or spiritual beliefs with modern reality. Sociopolitical Critique: Often used to address issues like colonization, dictatorship, and trauma.
Artists of the Movement
Ivan Marchuk
b. 1936
Ivan Marchuk (b. 1936) is a Ukrainian painter who invented "pliontanizm", a technique of building an image out of thousands of fine interwoven threads of paint instead of brushstrokes. He works in long cycles — among them "Voice of My Soul", "Shevchenkiana", "White Planet" and "Vienna Rhapsodies" — that move between landscape, portrait and visionary allegory.
Oleh Shupliak
b. 1967
Oleh Shupliak (b. 1967, Bishche, Ternopil Oblast) is an Honoured Artist of Ukraine best known for his 'dvovzory' — double-image paintings in which a landscape or genre scene resolves, at a second glance, into a portrait. He has been called the Ukrainian Salvador Dalí.
Olha Kvasha
b. 1976
Olha Kvasha is a contemporary Ukrainian painter born in Lutsk in 1976 and based in Lviv, a 1999 graduate of the Lviv Academy of Arts. She paints dreamlike, faintly naive Ukrainian landscapes — orchards, snowy village streets, river valleys and hillsides — in which an ordinary scene is tilted toward fairy tale.
Kateryna Kosianenko
b. 1978
Kateryna Kosianenko is a Kyiv painter and icon-painter whose figurative work fuses Ukrainian Baroque iconography with Renaissance composition and an impressionist feel for landscape light. Honoured Artist of Ukraine (2019) and a member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine since 2002, she works almost entirely in themed series. She has held more than 35 solo exhibitions and won first prize in painting at the 100th Salon d'Automne in Paris (2003).
Mariia Holub
b. 1990
Mariia Holub is a Ukrainian painter based in Cherkasy, born in 1990, who studied painting, graphics and design at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kyiv. She paints in acrylic on canvas, combining magical realism with op-art and pixel-like patterning in vivid, near-fluorescent colour. The Cherkasy Regional Art Museum gave her a solo exhibition, «Мереживо нескінченності» (Lace of Infinity), in 2022.
Works from this Movement
The Moon Rose over the Dnipro
Ivan Marchuk
A moonlit nocturne over the Dnipro, Marchuk's largest treatment of a moonlit night, in which the whole surface is spun from fine looping filaments of paint. In June 2024 it set an auction record for a contemporary Ukrainian artist at the Goldens house in Kyiv.
Interior Decor with Apples
Yevhen Hordiiets
Woman, Seashell and Jug
Tell Me the Truth
Ivan Marchuk
A frontal, icon-like female figure sheathed in a bristling armour of thread-fine strands, cupping a lit candle set inside a pale flower. Ukrposhta reproduced the painting in full on a 2.40 UAH definitive stamp in 2016.
Garden of Temptation
Ivan Marchuk
A still life from Marchuk's mature pliontanizm period, built from dense threads of colour. In June 2022 it sold for USD 120,000 at a charity auction in Kyiv with the proceeds going to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, placing it fifth in Lokalna Istoriia's ranking of the most expensive paintings by Ukrainian artists.
I was thirteen
Oleh Shupliak
A boy pasturing lambs outside a village, after the opening lines of Shevchenko's poem; the pastoral scene simultaneously forms the poet's own face. One of Shupliak's most reproduced dvovzory.
Forest Song. Lesya Ukrainka
Oleh Shupliak
A woodland scene from Lesya Ukrainka's drama 'The Forest Song' that resolves into the writer's portrait.
Summer
Yevhen Hordiiets
Fireflies (Lucciole)
Kateryna Kosianenko
Painted during the artist's residency in Frontino, Italy, in 2015; the Italian subtitle "lucciole" points to the summer fireflies of the Marche hills. One of the key works of her Frontino cycle.
Obolon Bestiary
Kateryna Kosianenko
A wide horizontal frieze from the "Graffiti for Anna" cycle, populating the artist's own Kyiv district of Obolon with a medieval-style bestiary of beasts and hybrid creatures.
Christmas Sale
Kateryna Kosianenko
A large square composition in which the Nativity is transposed into the crowded commercial bustle of a contemporary Ukrainian city at Christmas.
Landscape with black cow
Yevhen Hordiiets