Tahitian Girl Painting

Ivan Klimenko is a contemporary Belarusian artist and an associate professor in the Department of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture at the Belarusian State Academy of Arts. He works in easel painting and watercolors. Ivan Klimenko's works center on the romance of the sea. Throughout his career the artist has been working on a series of paintings entitled "Joys of the Sea," which includes landscapes, still lifes, and portraits. Ivan Klimenko is able to devote an entire canvas to a small shell or create a picture that is able to combine figurative and abstract art in an amazing way, boldly emphasizing the boundaries of forms using gold leaf. His eclectic use of color and the shapes of his contours emphasize the diverse subjects of his pictures. The rhythm in the artist’s works is based on asymmetry and “syncopated” shifts, which highlight the center of the composition and soften the activity of the background color, which sets off a pronounced contrast. His nudes, which are depicted in poses that are considered traditional for the genre, seem to float in a cloud of colors. Inspired by the works of Giotto and Henri Matisse, the artist pays great attention to the principle of generalization and artistic convention. In his easel paintings and even his watercolors, we are able to feel the architectonics of the fresco with its inherent monumental grandeur. Ivan Klimenko's sincere devotion to art and his enthusiastic attitude for life give the artist the ability to interpret what he sees and experiences through the intense play of colors.