Roman Selsky (1903, Lviv region - 1990, Lviv) was a central figure of high modernism in Ukraine, the founder of the modern Lviv school of painting. He worked in the fields of easel and graphic art. His artistic style reflects the entire evolution of European modernism: from impressionism to abstraction.
Roman Selsky did not limit his style to one. He actively experimented with color and space, the architectonics of the work, the shape of objects, and composition. His works are influenced by neoplasticism, post-impressionism, fauvism, expressionism, surrealism, cubism, abstractionism, and other movements and trends. The artist's early works were inspired by avant-garde trends; from the mid-1940s to the late 1950s, he worked realistically, and after that, he returned to the style of the School of Paris. During that period, he created many post-impressionist interiors. He actively worked with the topics of the Carpathians (ethnographic still lifes, genre scenes with Hutsuls, works with animalistic motifs, mountain landscapes), Crimea (beach scenes, seascapes, panoramas of the coast), often used the motif of an open window. Since the 1960s, he has been forming his author's style: he intensively generalizes the shape of objects, constantly searching for color harmony. The works of the second half of the 1960s demonstrate the author's further transformations of the artistic language - the attraction to the flat and geometric image. In the works of the 1970s, dark backgrounds and structuring contours appear. In the future, the artist will not stop experimenting with simple forms. At the center of the artist's philosophy is the slow flow of time, distant from the civilizational noise; the harmony of man and nature. The figurative painting language of Roman Selsky unites the Ukrainian poetic worldview, European aesthetics of modernism, and national sense of color.
