Gallery Portal 11 presents the exhibition “The Kyiv fresco”. 31.10. – 07.12.2025.
Dmitry Nagurny (1946–2019) was a Ukrainian painter, graphic artist, and monumental artist. He studied at the Faculty of Book Graphics of the Lviv Printing Institute (1964–1968). In 1969, he entered the Kyiv Art Institute, majoring in painting, and two years later transferred to the Department of Monumental Painting, where he studied under Tetyana Yablonska. He graduated from the Kyiv State Art Institute in 1975 and subsequently worked at the Kyiv Combine of Monumental and Decorative Arts. In 1986, he spent several months on assignment in Chornobyl, where he created 32 portraits of the disaster liquidators. He became a member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine in 1984 and was awarded the title of Honored Artist of Ukraine in 2002.
Nagurny’s artistic practice encompassed monumental art, graphics, and easel oil painting — elements that often intertwined throughout his work. In 1987, he initiated the exhibition “Pohliad” (“The View”), which became a landmark event in Ukrainian art of the late 1980s. Held at the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, the exhibition introduced new names, encouraged avant-garde thinking, and affirmed the principles of personal initiative and creative freedom. From 1987 to 2004, Dmitry Nagurny lived and worked abroad. His art combines elements of hyperrealism, op art, surrealism, and abstraction, yet its essence lies in spiritual depth, harmony, and the inner architectonics of form. His works are held in collections and museums in Ukraine, Italy, Finland, Belgium, and Germany.
The exhibition “The Kyiv Fresco” presents the city of Kyiv not as a specific landscape but as a spiritual space reflecting the tension between history, modernity, and the artist’s personal experience. Nagurny’s painting reveals the powerful influence of monumental art, with themes of architectural landscape and geometric structure recurring throughout his oeuvre. His depictions of Kyiv’s cityscapes are particularly striking — the artist renders the perfect architectural forms of Saint Sophia Cathedral, Saint Andrew’s Church, and other iconic landmarks, transforming these buildings into symbols of the city’s spiritual realm. Trained in the tradition of monumentalism and large-scale painting, Nagurny translates this sense of scope into the intimate format of the canvas, turning each work into a fragment of a grand wall narrative that unfolds beyond time.
11 Triokhsviatytelska str. Kyiv, Ukraine
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