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Alexander Dubovik (Ukrainian: Дубовик Олександр Михайлович; born 1 August 1931, Kyiv) is a Ukrainian artist and theorist. Works in the field of painting, graphics, and monumental-decorative art. Graduated from the Kyiv State Art Institute (1957, National Academy of Visual art and Architecture). Teachers majoring in S. Grigor'ev, G. Titov. The Academy of Arts of the USSR (1965). Member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine since 1960. Principally achieving recognition in the 1970s with avant-garde works. His art is based on mathematical philosophical and complex system processes.

Dubovik was the renegade artist of the Soviet state-sanctioned art. He had an opportunity to follow in the footsteps of realism and academic art, however he did not find the existing tradition of realistic expression sufficient. In his search for the “true and eternal art” he took an alternative route and developed his own tradition he termed suggestive realism.

Biography
Alexander was born in Kyiv in 1931 in the family of Mikhail Dubovik, a renowned popular poet of the time. In 1941 Mikhail Dubovik was arrested on charges of taking part in nationalistically inspired pro-Ukrainian associations and engaging in a “counter-revolutionary” written exchange. The same year he was killed. Alexander Dubovik’s life was affected by his father being labelled a Ukrainian bourgeois nationalist, however he managed to get a good education and following graduation his career quickly took off. He received professional training from the Kyiv Art Institute. At the start of the 20th century it was a buzzing cultural hub, it was home to new ideas and innovative approaches, new language of expression was developed here, it served as platform of artistic discussion and exchange between Malevich and Boichuk, Narbut and Bogomazov. By the mid-century the Institute will undergo a series of unfortunate reforms to become just another education establishment which trained in craftsmanship rather than artistic expression.

In the 1950’s Dubovik works in a realistic manner namely friends’ portraits, landscapes, and a whole series of self-portraits. In 1958 he entered the Artists’ Union of the USSR, and became an active participant in its public activities. He painted a self portrait against the background of ‘Portrait of the Artist’s Daughter’ by Mikhail Nesterov. Programmability of this art work was manifested, in the first instance, in its painting technique peculiar to the best examples of the national art in the late nineteenth — early twentieth century.

In 1962 Dubovik works to develop his personal system of symbolic signs which will become his new dictionary of terms. He just dived head first into the unknown, he set out to develop a different allegorical and metaphysical language. Dubovik completely does away with realistic painting and works with simple geometric shapes and symbols like the circle, square, and line. Dubovik’s prefers a square as his canvas format. The square has ancient symbolic history, but also “it holds vast amounts of steady and serene energy. When the balance is disturbed, the energy is unleashed in a dramatic event. The square also easily absorbs changes in composition and at the same time keeps its integrity. Dubovik’s system of symbols became his main achievement, his invention. Each symbol has its unique meaning: a bouquet refers to another reality, entryway into another world; a Victor represents triumph over reality; a horse is a symbol of free spirit. To describe multi-layered reality and changing horizons, prevalent in his painting, Dubovik introduced the analogy of the palimpsest. The artist examines this notion in a treatise where he details his ideas and supports his theoretic discoveries with modern and ancient philosophy and art theory.

Dubovik followed his own rules, he found strength not to let the system break him down like some of his fellow artists who faithfully served the establishment. This coincides with the end of the Thaw, the power system has changed, the general outlook on art also has changed, and society itself was transitioning. After the Thaw came a period of Stagnation. Following which for twenty years well up till the late 1980’s Dubovik’s art work disappears from the public eye.

Dubovik’s art echoes his intellectual journey – he integrates new ideas he borrowed from literature and philosophy into his artwork, sketchbooks, and academic treatises. Starting from the late 1970’s Dubovik works to develop monumental art projects for business companies, schools, and public establishments; his wife Irina was always there to help him. Today these monumental art projects can be viewed in cities located in Ukraine, Russia, Karelia, and France. His monumental art was also based on allegories and abstract notions. Non-figurative expression or abstract art which was frowned upon within the tradition of easel painting was duly implemented in large scale monumental art – this was a paradox of Soviet art which many artists in the 1970’s took advantage of.

Since 1980th Alexander Dubovik became one of the Ukrainian artists who got the possibility to travel abroad and to show his art to the whole world. In 1988 the artist held his personal exhibition at the exhibition hall of the Artists’ Union of the USSR and the next year at the exhibition hall of the Artists’ Union of the USSR and the Weiner Gallery in Munich. Since 1990 the artist annually held his exhibitions in museums, exhibition halls and galleries in Ukraine as well as abroad. In the middle of decade he created two monumental works – stained glass windows in the New Apostolic Church in Kyiv (1994-1995) and wall paintings in the chapel of Notre Dame des Anges in the commune of Berre-les-Alpes in the surroundings of Nice (1996). He wrote philosophic and theoretical works in which he vividly and often paradoxically expressed his views on art and the artist within its context. Among his programmatic texts one should name ‘My Catechism’, ‘Palimpsests’, ‘ The Ladder to the Empty Skies’.

The artist's works are stored in the National Art Museum of Ukraine, Khmelnytsky and Zaporizhia Art Museums, State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow, Russia), Russian Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia), Wurt Museum (Erstein, Germany), Museum of Contemporary Art (Tehran, Iran), Ukrainian National Museum (Chicago, USA), Zimmerly Art Museum (New Jersey, USA) and many private collections in Ukraine and abroad. Oleksandr Dubovyk's works were also included in the collection of Gradobank, which became part of the NAMU fund.