Andrey Savchenko

My name is Andrey Savchenko («Andy’s») and I was born in the USSR (Ukraine) in 1963. At that time the country was not ready for my paintings, so a long, hard way of resistance laid before me.

I started painting in my childhood, just drawing for myself. But I always felt that the limited territory of my country was not enough for me, I needed to travel, to come out from behind the Iron Curtain.

The turning point was in 1980, when all the experience I had accumulated through my 23 years of life splashed out in my first conscious painting. The trigger for this was the song by Pink Floyd, “The Wall”. It opened a portal through which I could travel and transfer my experiences to canvas. Through music I destroyed the walls of the totalitarian regime, flying at bullet speed to a parallel reality, to worlds I had never known but loved very much for the unlimited freedom they promised.

All I saw and felt was transferred to the page. So, my paintings were born, filled with freedom, emotions, protest.

For a long time I found this in the language of surrealism, but every new trip needed to be more dynamic, and so abstract paintings appeared. This truly livened up my works. Even upon completion they continued to change everyday. The...