Roman Selsky was a Ukranian and Soviet artist and educator. Selsky is well-known for his numerous landscapes, still-lifes, portraits, subject painting, decorative compositions, drawings, appliqué and ceramics. Still-lifes and landscapes were the artist’s favourites, through which he revealed the best of his talent.
Background
Selsky was born on May 21, 1903, in Sokal, Ukraine, to a family of educated and intelligent people where important traditions were kept. He was the youngest child of Julian Selsky, a lawyer, and his wife Julia Shtokel’. Stephan and Feliks were his elder brothers.
Education
Roman Selsky's first educational steps were taken at home; he studied music, foreign languages, and drawing. In 1913 Selsky became a student of a private school at Lviv’s German Gymnasium. His first art teacher was Shonstowsky, while his middle school teacher Leon Dołżycki was the first to notice the boy's talent. Young Roman Selsky was gradually introduced to Lviv’s art scene of that time, a post-war and post-imperial world.
At the age of 18, he began his studies at the Lviv Art-Industrial School. In 1922 he became a student of the Academy of Fine Arts, or Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts, in Kraków. There a number of Polish artists, including Ignazio Penkowsky, Frederick Patch, Woicekh Weiss, and Ksaveriy Dunikowsky had an impact on the young artist. In Kraków, he spent mush time in the workshops and studios of Józef Mehoffer, Józef Pankiewicz, and later also Felician Kowarsky.
Thanks to his time in Kraków, Roman Selsky developed a good knowledge of painting, composition, colour, and art history. Being a student of Mehoffer, Selsky began to support the Secessionist art movement’s ideas and started to understand the principles of style, ornament, decoration, flatness, and linearity. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1927.
Selsky went to Paris in 1925. Many surprises awaited him in Paris on his visit, first and foremost of them being easy access to the masterpieces of world art and to the artworks by French modern painters such as Matisse, Léger, Cézanne, Bonnard, Picasso. While living in Paris, and then for a short-time in Gdansk, Selsky improved his technique. He attempted to "lose" the material identity of his objects to contrast the reality of abstraction with its opposite.
Roman Selsky continued the work on developing his own style and after returning to Lviv in the 1930s. In early 1930 Selsky became a participant of the first exhibition held by the Association of Independent Ukrainian Artists. During this period of time, Selsky grew into one of the most influential painters in Lviv. His creative work was marked by great diversity, including marine pieces from Ilel, a cycle of interiors, autolithographs, etchings and Carpathian winter landscapes.
The economic depression in Poland in the early 1930s, the intensified class struggle and the growing repression of progressive and democratic forces caused dramatic changes in the world outlook of artists. This period was characterized by a keen interest of the painters in the Soviet way of life and Soviet art. Roman Selsky was not an exception.
At this period Roman Selsky created his best artworks from their ideological point of view. Among them were The Battleship Potyomkin series inspired by Sergei Eisenstein’s film of the same title, the Sailor, the Revolution, The Banners, The Execution, etc. Unfortunately, the works mentioned were destroyed during the Nazi occupation of Lviv in the Second World War and later reproduced.
The peak of Selsky’s creative growth came between the 1950s and 1970s. Taking into account that socialist realism and hermeticism were the leading Soviet styles of the time, Roman Selsky tried to combine them with everything else he had learned during his time in Paris. Two main themes dominated his art during that period: the Carpathian Mountains, where Selsky found energy, inspiration, and ideas, as well as a place to calm his thoughts and emotions; and Crimea, a place, which enriched his inner world and where he also found a spiritual rest.
At the same time, Roman Selsky succeded as a teacher. From 1947 on he worked as a lecturer of the Lviv Institute of Applied and Decorative Art (the present-day Lviv National Academy of Arts). All the following years were closely linked with the institute: up to his retirement in 1974, Selsky gave lessons in painting and composition, and in techniques of monumental art, supervised graduation works of students majoring in decorative painting, artistic textile, ceramics and glass.
Selsky became an influential example for many young painters from different countries. His influence on the Lviv art world was huge. As a result, even a peculiar "Selsky School" developed. Up until the end of his life, Roman Selsky painted all the time and he painted a lot.
Roman Selsky considered Nature supreme in painting.
Quotations:
"I paint nothing from my imaginings, I just bring a multitude of natural correlations into conformity with my own colorful range of plasticity."
Membership
The 1930s saw the creation of the Association of Independent Ukrainian Artists, a new artistic society uniting young painters, architects and graphic artists, in which Selsky took an active part. Roman Selsky was elected its first President.
Personality
Roman Selsky's name was never associated with any squabbles, scandals, or avant-garde slogans, as he was not rebellious by nature. Selsky was like that old fortified wine, kept down in the cellar to reach maturity and prove its worth. The artist was always quiet and solicitous, the result of good upbringing and education.
Quotes from others about the person
Liubov Voloshyn: "By and large he [Roman Selsky] served to shape the character of the entire Lviv art school; he was among the first to combine in his creations the poetic Ukrainian world view, national mentality, as well as European culture and the Western Weltanschauung. Roman Selsky reached a high cultural level in the color organization of his images, compositions, and conventional generalized pictures."
Interests
Artists
Oleksa Novakivskyi, Kazimierz Sichulski, Józef Pankiewicz, Paul Cezanne
Connections
Roman Selsky married the Lviv painter Margit Reich in 1926. On a honeymoon, the newlyweds went to Corsica.