M. Vaisberg

Matvei Vaisberg is the only son of Semion Vaisberg, a chess trainer, and Shelly Harzman, an art historian; a grandson of the poet Matvey Harzman (Motl Harzman) on his mother’s side and Berta J. Vaisberg, a seven-time Ukraine Champion in chess, on his father’s. In 1985, he graduated from Ivan Fiodorov Ukrainian Printing Institute (nowadays Ukrainian Academy of Printing). In 1988, he started to take part in collective exhibitions. In 1990, his first personal exhibition took place in the Historical Museum of Podol (Kiev). More than fifty of both collective and his personal exhibitions have taken place by now, including those in the National Art Museum  (Kiev), Kiev National Museum of Russian Art (Kiev), Museum of Contemporary Art in Odessa (Odessa), Cherkasy Museum of Fine Arts (Cherkasy), Berlin Wall Museum (Berlin), Ukrainian Institute of America (New York), Europe House (London), the Sejm of the Republic of Poland (Warsaw), Georgian National museum Georgia.

Vaisberg deeply appreciates the creative work of many artists, especially that of Georges Rouault, Chaïm Soutine and Francisco Goya. Together with Andrij Mokrousov, an art and literary critic, he developed the conception of art arrière-garde many years ago and represents it in his art. Along with being a stranger to the mimetic, he cannot be considered to be close to abstract art at the same time.