Alla Honcharuk

Alla Honcharuk (1946) is a Ukrainian artist and an outsider of Lviv’s art scene in the 1980s–1990s. She works in a unique eclectic style and expressive painting manner. In the 1970s, she rejected the canons of Soviet art, focusing on formal experiments in global avant-garde and expressive depictions of reality. In her urban landscapes, still lifes, genre scenes, and symbolic compositions, she explores the interaction between a solitary individual and society. Her style is influenced by German Expressionism and features a limited palette of primary colors: red, blue, yellow, and black.

Song-1 is one of the compositions exploring folkloric characters the artist encountered in the Carpathians. The broken depiction of facial expressions resembles the experiments of Parisian Cubists. The composition creates an effect of movement and vibration, as if transforming sound into a visual image. Filled with emotional energy, the painting immerses the viewer in the pure rhythm of a Carpathian melody.

The late 1990s became a period of refined polishing of Honcharuk’s distinctive style, where imagery is intertwined with the transmission of linear rhythm, impulse, and resonance through color. This work captivates with its ability to convey the energy of music through painting.