Untitled 

This untitled diptych was created by Tiberiy Szilvashi, and it exemplifies the non-objective painting for which he's known. Szilvashi came of age as an artist in Soviet Ukraine, where the institutions of art were strictly policed to promote social realism. It is interesting to consider how the artist came to develop a style of abstract expressionism so antithetical to the cultural expectations of the USSR. What visual codes can we detect in these blocks of color? Do they offer some implicit commentary on the artist's social or political context? To better understand Szilvashi's work, it would be worthwhile to delve into the history of Ukrainian art during the Soviet era, and to study the dissident artists who found ways to express themselves outside the bounds of the state-sanctioned style. The meaning of Szilvashi's abstraction lies in the way it defies institutional constraints.