User:CarpathianArt37/Sigetiy Stepan

Sigetiy Stepan is famous Ukrainian painter. Member of the Transcarpathian painting school.

Biography
He was born on March 5, 1926 in the village of Oleshnyk of the Vynogradiv district of Transcarpathia. He died on January 3, 2014.

Paintings
Stepan Sigetiy is the author of more than 100 different paintings of various subjects: wooden churches, landscapes, flowers. The most famous among them are the series of paintings of wooden churches of the Carpathians, mainly of Transcarpathia. His teachers were famous painters: Adalbert Erdely, Anton Kashshay and Zoltan Sholtes.

Stepan Sigetiy is the first artist of Transcarpathia who began to paint the wooden churches of Transcarpathia as a whole series and record the unique cultural and sacred heritage . For more than 30 years, he depicted more than 60 different wooden churches of Transcarpathia. Painting these churches was his soul's calling, he was struck by their uniqueness and originality, most of which are Greek Catholic churches and are architectural masterpieces of the Carpathian region. On his canvases, individual wooden churches of the Carpathians, which have already been lost, are immortalized, in particular, the Greek-Catholic Church of St. Michael the Archangel in the village of Neresnytsia, so sometimes you can still see them only on the artist's paintings. Belief in good and the desire to pass on to descendants the unique beauty of native landscapes, optimistic moods and bright emotions are defining in the works of Stepan Sigetiy. The paintings "Nevytskyi Castle" (1980) and "Mukachivskyi Castle" (1985) are also significant works of the master.

Wooden Tserkvas of the Carpathian Region in Poland and Ukraine are the group of historically valuable unique wooden churches that were included in the UNESCO  World Heritage Site on June 21, 2013 at the 37th session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee held in Cambodia. Since 1979, Stepan Sigetiy has participated in various exhibitions not only in Transcarpathia, but also in Armenia, Slovakia, Hungary and the USA.

Exhibitions
His personal exhibitions were in Uzhhorod in 1990 and 1996 under the title "Monuments of wooden architecture of Transcarpathia of the XIV-XVII centuries and landscapes", in 2001 under the title "Road to the Temple", dedicated to his 75th anniversary of birth; 2006 - "Golden Crosses in Blue Skies..." on the occasion of his 80th birthday.

Awards
Stepan Sigetiy was awarded in 1981 the title of Honored Worker of Culture of the Ukraine. He was also awarded by the Order of Bohdan Khmelnytsky III degree in 1999 and by the Bishop's awarded letter "As an expression of gratitude for the preservation of the cultural heritage of our region under the Carpathians" (2007).

His paintings are the part of the European cultural heritage.