Maryan Besaga

ART & RESEARCH

Art-historical research is a parallel and integral part of my creative practice. Since the mid-2000s, it has developed across several interconnected areas — from the study of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Ukrainian art and individual artistic practices to cultural dialogue, the contemporary art market, and the transformation of artistic processes through digital technologies.

One of my first major research projects focused on the work of Leopold Levytsky. Years of research resulted in a series of scholarly publications and the album Leopold Levytsky (Rodovid, Kyiv, 2006), which examines the artist’s work within the broader context of twentieth-century Ukrainian and Central European art.

The next major direction was dedicated to Ivan Ostafiychuk — his graphic art, painting, metaphorical imagery, ex libris works, and the distinctive characteristics of his artistic language. This research culminated in the album-monograph Ivan Ostafiychuk. Sources of Creativity (Kyiv, 2013).

A separate cycle of research is devoted to the work of Dmytro Paruta. In publications from 2017–2020, I examined the artist’s early period, his graphic works of the 1990s, the synthesis of graphic techniques, his painting, and the distinctive qualities of his approach to landscape. This research resulted in the preparation of the album-monograph Dmytro Paruta. Paths of the Artist.

Over time, my research expanded from individual artistic practices toward broader questions of cultural and artistic dialogue and the role of art in contemporary society. One outcome of this direction was the article Cultural and Artistic Dialogues in Galicia in the Second Half of the 20th Century, co-authored with Yuliya Babunych and Orest Holubets and published in the Baltic Journal of Art History (2022).

A more recent stage of my research addresses the contemporary art market, auction practices, and the digital transformation of the art environment. My publications of 2024–2025 explore the impact of socio-economic transformations on the Ukrainian art market and the growing role of digital technologies in the art-historical research and documentation that support auction practices.

For me, scholarly research is therefore not an academic activity separate from artistic practice, but another way of understanding art — its history, internal structures, cultural contexts, and the transformations taking place within it today.

MONOGRAPHS

LEOPOLD LEVYTSKY
Album / Research Project · 2006
288 pages · Rodovid · Kyiv

IVAN OSTAFIYCHUK. SOURCES OF CREATIVITY
Album-Monograph · 2013
288 pages · Kyiv

DMYTRO PARUTA. PATHS OF THE ARTIST
Album-Monograph · 2017
288 pages · Manuscript