"At the age of 22, I knew I would be an abstractionist. I came across some abstraction, and I got a chill, a shiver... I was even scared, because it was 1969, or even earlier, before I entered the institute.Abstraction is a rather complicated thing. You need to know academicism so well in order to be able to use everything that the academic system brings – the theme, the mood, the plasticity – in abstraction."Anatoly Kryvolap, Ukrainian Artist
"I believe that it is worth coming to this exhibition every week to soak in the life-giving colours of spring itself. "Foretypes" revitalise. This is exactly the kind of art that gives us joy of life."Natalia Shpytkovska, Director of M17 Contemporary Art Center
"After "Zhyvopysnyi Zapovidnyk", Kryvolap immerses himself in radical experiments. The abstract compositions he was working on at the time were becoming more and more like free practice, oscillating between the orderliness of horizontal stripes and the arbitrariness of colour splashes. All attempts to find any realistic reminiscences are in vain: the viewer is confronted with a new reality that will be associated with the artist's name from now on."Valeriy Sakharuk, Curator of the "Foretypes" exhibition, Art Historian
As part of the exhibition, on 16 April 2024, an Artist talk with Anatoly Kryvolap and a grand presentation of the catalogue prepared by the curator Valeriy Sakharuk will take place. The event will be attended by artist Anatoly Kryvolap, exhibition curator and author of the catalogue Valeriy Sakharuk, and Natalia Shpytkovska, director of the M17 CAC. The exhibition project will also include curatorial tours, which will be announced separately on the media resources of the M17 Contemporary Art Center.

Before he found his own unique visual imagery, Anatoly Kryvolap went through a challenging path of testing the form. It was only in 1986, 10 years after graduating from the Kyiv State Art Institute, that he realised he had found his style. In the same year, the first abstract images born of the artist’s imagination appeared from under Kryvolap’s brush.
The first half of the 1990s was defined by the ‘Zhyvopysnyi Zapovidnyk’ art group, and afterwards, the artist plunged into radical experiments. In 2007, Anatoly Kryvolap turned to the visual foretype – light, which contains all the basic colours, creating the programme composition “Structures”.
During 2014-2024, the artist worked on the murals of the Church of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin, located in the village of Lypivka, Kyiv region: the temple is permeated with colour, which subordinates everything around. It is here that the metaphysics of colour merge with the metaphysics of the spirit, which the artist has been pursuing throughout his life.
The exhibition “Foretypes” at M17 CAC is the first to combine the artist’s abstract works with icons.