About the artist

Petro Popovskyi is a Ukrainian painter and a member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine and the International Association of Art (IAA). He was born on 10 August 1950 in the Vinnytsia region of Ukraine.

For many years, Petro Popovskyi lived and worked in Odesa, a city that played an important role in shaping his artistic vision. Since 2022, he has lived and continued his artistic practice in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. This new period of his work is closely connected with the natural environment and architecture of the Eifel region. At the same time, his paintings retain an inner connection with the landscapes of southern Ukraine, the sea and the surroundings of Odesa.

Petro Popovskyi graduated from Odesa University in 1976. He subsequently taught in the Department of Psychology until 2011. The psychology of art became one of the principal areas of his academic and professional activity. In 1995, he founded a laboratory for the psychology of art at the university, where academic research, conferences and art exhibitions were organised.

His interest in the perception of colour, space and artistic imagery became naturally intertwined with his own painting practice. This connection between art and psychology makes it possible to view Popovskyi’s work not only as an observation of the visible world, but also as an exploration of the ways in which light, colour and space influence human emotional perception.

Landscape and still life are the principal genres of his work, with plein-air painting occupying a particularly important place in his practice. Petro Popovskyi works exclusively from life, without using photographs or imagined compositions as the basis for his paintings. Direct contact with the chosen subject and the opportunity to observe natural changes in light, colour and atmosphere are fundamental to his approach.

His painting method is based on the classical system of colour and tonal relationships. Colour and tone not only describe the form of the depicted subjects but also create the pictorial space, its depth, luminous atmosphere and emotional character. The artist seeks to preserve the feeling of a particular moment: the time of day, the weather, the movement of the air and the changing qualities of natural light.

Petro Popovskyi’s work belongs to the broader context of contemporary European landscape painting and has a strong affinity with the Impressionist tradition. His paintings, however, are not intended as literal or academically precise reproductions of nature. The observed subject becomes the basis for a painterly interpretation in which light, atmosphere, space and chromatic unity take on particular importance.

His compositions reveal a striving for a natural organisation of space and a balanced relationship between areas of colour. In his landscapes, he conveys the immediacy of the impression experienced while working outdoors. In his still lifes, his attention is focused on the interaction of objects with light and their surrounding environment, as well as on subtle colour transitions and the material presence of form.

His move to Germany marked the beginning of a new stage in his artistic development. His paintings now include landscapes of the Eifel region, views of small German towns and villages, and architectural motifs from Mutscheid, Bad Münstereifel and Euskirchen. Regardless of geography, the foundation of his art remains the attentive observation of nature and the desire to convey not merely external details, but the atmosphere and emotional state of what he sees.

Since 1995, Petro Popovskyi has participated in regional, national and international art exhibitions. In 2016, he became a member of the International Association of Art (IAA), and later a member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine. His works are held in private collections in Ukraine and Germany.