Illya Chichkan (, born 29 August 1967 in Kiev, Ukraine) is a Ukrainian artist. He is a representative of the art Ukrainian New Wave movement, which emerged in the 1990s. He is a third generation artist. He lives and works in Berlin, and Kyiv, as a painter, author of installations, and develops photo and video-projects.

Early life

Illya Chichkan is the grandson of, a Ukrainian socialist realist painter and professor at the Kyiv Art Institute. His father, Arkadii Chychkan, was a Ukrainian nonconformist artist. He participated in "The exhibition of 13" (1979), a manifestation of Ukrainian painters' resistance to social realism.

Personal life

In 2014, Chichkan along with his wife Masha Shubina, visited India. During winter, he paints there. Chichkan has a daughter, Sasha. She is a co-author of Psychodarwinism. In a dialogue Marat Gelman with Kostyantyn Doroshenko they discussed the exhibition New Psychodarwinism. The artist took it as a basis famous paintings of the Tretyakov Gallery depicting the main characters as monkeys. Analyzing the artist's blasphemous gesture Doroshenko remarked: "Imperial totalitarian society puts art on a pedestal as something that rises above life and directs it… « Psychodarwinism» - a proposal to abandon elitism and hierarchies.». Chychkan's children, David and Oleksandra, are Ukrainian artists.

Literature