Bazilika sv. Marka

Mykola Bodnar

Mykola Bodnar was born on 7 May 1956 in Ukrainian Subcarpathia. From 1971 to 1975, he studied at the Secondary School of Applied Arts in Uzhhorod, and in 1984 he graduated from the National Academy of Arts in Lviv. For almost twenty years, he lived and worked in Košice before settling in Dunajská Lužná near Bratislava in 2013. His works are exhibited mainly in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Austria. He regularly attends international symposiums and plein-air painting events. In his figurative work, he focuses on urban architecture and landscape, floral still life, and portraiture. He captures the city not only as a collection of buildings but above all as a living environment with its own atmosphere, rhythm, and light. He paints landscapes and still lifes with vivid colour and energy. His work is rooted in modern realism, which he transforms through confident brushwork and the contrast between warm and cool tones, reminiscent at times of Fauvist and Expressionist painting. The other pole of his work is abstraction influenced by Art Informel and gestural painting. His dynamic compositions, full of colour and energy, are sometimes interconnected with realistic elements, such as the human figure, nude or face. In portraiture, he combines a confident draughtsman’s touch with a sensitivity to a person’s character and current state of mind. Across a variety of subjects, he thus explores the relationship between visible reality and inner experience - between what the eye captures and what the soul perceives.