Taras loboda biography examples

Back to the directory

Czech Republic / Ukraine

Taras Loboda (born 1961, Ukraine) is an exceptional artist who hails from a distinguished artistic family. In Loboda's landscapes the gloomy masses of vegetation in the foreground emphasize the wild colorful vegetation in the background.

The world being created by him is a world of stiff and motionless apparitions, rather cold and in most cases looking as if devoid of emotional coloring.

Loboda has successfully presented his works in international galleries, including in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Slovakia, Liechtenstein, the United States of America and France. In women portraits there are splendidly aesthetic female figures - naked or draped into heavy dense cloth. That is why his still-life pictures, perfected in a masterly fashion and with a high grade of illusiveness are filled with enchanting radiance, and lit up with a light from another world and that is why so terribly cold (like an ice crystal).

Presently living and working in Prague, the artist persistently and purposefully develops three main motives: woman's portrait and act (body with melodious lines, a look with a sad solitude feeling), strict classic still life and a phantom landscape. As to seducing the spectator by supporting in him inner nervousness, a stained expectation, Loboda is very good at that.

He succeeds in all three lines of his creative work because his works are qualitative and interesting for the public.

He easily shapes the form of the things, selecting paints according to a contrast principle, freely achieving the expressive radiance and sonority. Taras Loboda, an excellent graphic artist and painter with rich fantasy and a developed decorative flair, is usually trying to look beyond the front side of things, to penetrate through the Looking-Glass of Alice, to the time and space which are aloof from the people whenever he pictures a beautiful stranger or flowers boiling up above the smooth surface of porcelain and copper or else luxurious paradise bushes above the frozen lakes.

He obtained his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kiev in 1985 and subsequently trained at the esteemed Zaretzky studio. Since 1997, Loboda has been based in Prague, the Czech Republic's capital city, where he oversees a gallery in the city centre.

Loboda's specialisation is in thematic compositions, portraits, landscapes and still lifes.

The artist's works, frequently executed in a large format, are distinguished by an enigmatic effect that leaves a lasting impression on the viewer. He is a participant of many international, republican, all-Soviet Union exhibitions. Chernysh continues to live in the Ukraine, but Loboda and Fechyk moved permanently to Prague in 1993, and have become major leaders in the Czech cultural community.

Loboda’s women, with sad eyes and exaggerated Angelina Jolie lips, are usually adorned with vivid scarves, hats or floral concoctions, and command a long, intriguing examination.

His “lakescapes”, with reflections of wild, colorful vegetation and flowers, suggest an enchanting radiance that may be at the end of an elusive rainbow.

Loboda, born in Ivano-Frankovsk, Ukraine, a classically trained graduate of the Institute of Art in Kiev, has found his place in the European post-modernist art space and consistently defends it.