Volodymyr Ropetskyy <<ARTIST PAGE

Ropetskyy sculptures are in private collections, in galleries & public museums in Europe (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany) Russia and Canada.

Volodymyr Ropetskyy was born [1953] in the Galician village of Marinopil. He is a graduate of the Lviv Arts Academy.

As a Ukrainian sculptor, Ropetskyy refused the ideals of socialist art imposed on him in the former Soviet Union. Instead, he concentrated on creating sculptures which accented a common Western European dialogue. His works confirmed his desire to escape the cultural isolation of the Iron Curtain.

The idea of victory over fear, of having the freedom to create as an individual may be taken for granted in the western world. Imagine, however, trying to preserve the spirit and sense of free creation under conditions of constant ideological, psychological and political pressure as was the case in the Soviet Union.

The society Ropetskyy was a part of was expecting the Soviet regime to stop the mass terror, the liquidation of modern contemporary works of art and the lessening of censorship. These expectations of course were never realized within the framework of Soviet dictatorship. Ropetskyy, like so many of his colleagues, were dreaming of a modern culture, inspired by the ideals of liberty. That romantic notion was mere fantasy and only became reality when the Soviet Union finally collapsed.