Selected dates:

March 14, 1957

Born in Walily in Podlasie (Poland).

Leon Tarasevich is a living legend in modern Belarusian art. Born and living in Podlasie, being a representative of the Belarusian ethnic minority in Poland, he always emphasized his national identity, and his active artistic and political position is an example of an expanded understanding of the boundaries of national culture.

Born in Podlasie in the village of Valily, not far from the border of Belarus (the region is largely populated by ethnic Belarusians). He speaks Belarusian and positions himself as an ethnic Belarusian.

He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (Department of Painting in the studio of Professor T. Dominik, 1979-1984).

The artist lives in eastern Poland, in his native village of Valila, which is why nature motifs are so expressive in his work.

Tarasevich represented Poland at the 2001 Venice Biennale, the Sao Paulo Biennale. Tarasevich's paintings are in all major Polish collections, and in many foreign ones (in museums in America, Scandinavia, Greece, Korea, etc.).

Tarasiewicz's works are an innovative creative quintessence of the Polish landscape, although in recent years the artist has been more interested in pure color experiments. Over time, his picturesque element also captures elements of architecture: walls, ceilings, floors, columns (in 1995, the artist paints the columns of the Vitebsk Art Museum in Vitebsk). Tarasevich's works are notable for their coloristic and compositional rigor. Rhythmic compositions of colored stripes, drawn directly on the ceiling or walls, create a visual effect that allows you to somehow penetrate the work.

Tarasiewicz's gigantic artistic gesture was an exhibition at the Ujazdowski Castle Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, where the artist made one huge pictorial work of colored concrete, with which he filled an entire floor of the castle with an area of about 500 square meters. m.

Since 1996, Tarasiewicz has been a professor of painting at the Academy in Warsaw (Head of Malstudios).

Tarasevich was awarded the Prize of the Polish Culture Foundation. Justifying their decision, the Foundation's specialists noted in an official communiqué that Tarasevich “for more than twenty years with his work has challenged both the traditional understanding of painting and any conventional approach to art. He translates his inspirations from the surrounding world into the plane of abstraction, giving them a universal character.

Tarasevich conducts a lot of public work, is in constant contact with religious and national organizations, youth movements and various cultural centers. Awarded with many prizes, awards, diplomas [1].

In September 1995, Leon Tarasevich came to Vitebsk to participate in the In-formation contemporary art festival. The artist chose for his painting the powerful vertical polygons of the columns of the Art Museum and painted them in oil with rhythmic stripes, alternating lines of colors of ocher, white and black. It was a programmatic manifestation of Tarasevich's architectural painting, which revealed his mechanism of the constructive principle of rhythmic repetition, which was later repeatedly implemented in his monumental works.

The Vitebsk work of Leon Tarasevich does not exist today. Initially, the work was created as a temporary one, but the organizers of the festival and experts managed to persuade the management to include the painting in the permanent exhibition, and then for almost 12 years to fight with the management, some dissatisfied visitors and city authorities against the destruction of the work. In 2007, the painting was painted over during repairs without approval, by the decision of the new director of the institution.

Notes:

[1] artdic.ru