Vityk Max

Max Vityk is a Ukrainian-American artist and geologist, who was born in Lviv, studied geology at the Lviv University, and in 1989 received an academic degree of Candidate of Mineralogical Sciences. In the same year, he moved to Canada, later to the USA, where he continued to study and work as a geologist.

During his long travels, he studied American contemporary art and took up painting under the initial influence of the artists of the American Abstract Expressionist school. Combining geology and art, Vityk worked in Ukraine, Egypt, the Netherlands and the USA, and since 2020 he has been permanently living and working in Ukraine.

In his works, the artist explores both figurative and abstract art, inspired by his geological vision. Complete abstraction is by definition the complete absence of an object. At the same time, Max Vityk’s abstract series of sculptural paintings is based on the most concrete plot – the history of the planet Earth. For the first time in the history of art, Vityk depicted the evolution of our planet in paintings – from its birth to the present. Max Vityk has developed a unique new technique based on amazing textures reminiscent of bright rock formations.

These textures flow like molten magma on large canvases, as if at any moment they might succumb to the force of gravity and spill out of the picture. The colors combined with the textures of the rocks speak of the long-buried layers of the prehistoric planet Earth and at the same time of the unique minerals that are too fantastic to be associated with this planet.

Vityk’s figurative art is an exploration of narrative elements and figures from ancient petroglyphs as mythological and folklore symbols. In these series, parts of myths, traditions and understanding of universal non-mythological whimsical images of people, animals and plants are mentioned. The main theme of Vityk’s fine art is the pathos of naive visions. In one of the last series of “Warriors of Light”, the artist “modernizes” the archetypal mystical material in order to transfer modern events to the plane of the eternal struggle between good and evil.

During the last twenty years, Vityk exhibited a lot, attracting an international audience with his special artistic vision. Recent solo exhibitions include projects at the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York, ArtMarts Gallery in Cairo, the International Museum of Art in McAllen, Texas, and the National Museum of Kyiv Art Gallery. His personal exhibitions were presented at the Scope Art fairs in Basel, Context Art in New York and Miami, as well as at Art Kyiv in Ukraine. His project on “Energy”, which for ten years decorated the central hall of the headquarters of the Shell company in The Hague, recently opened in Kyiv and is on permanent display in the central office of Naftogaz.