HRYHORII ZGHUROVETS

"Butterflies" is a series of six large-format paintings - a shared visual grammar of concealed faces, objects held in the mouth, and color-coded butterflies - exploring human presence exposed by the war in Ukraine. The butterfly is not a symbol of hope, but what remains of freedom when everything else is taken.

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Acrylic / 70x100 cm / 2026

The painting is structured as a flag - read top to bottom, not left to right. Three zones in white, blue, and red: Russia's colours, repurposed.White fog at the top: Lenin from behind, arms outstretched, dissolving. Crows. A construction crane - the eternal promise of something never built.Below: Soviet concrete, Kremlin walls, St. Basil's towers - the architectural grammar of an empire that consumed its people and called it progress.At the bottom: red. Not the red of revolution - the red of what remains. Sunken tanks, broken rockets, barbed wire, glass bottles drifting in stillness.

Artist statement

I paint silence: the silence of violence, propaganda, grief, complicity, and oblivion. Having grown up in Ukraine and now living in Budapest, war is my baseline context. Yet, I avoid literal warfare; I focus on what war does to ordinary people, standing cities, and fragile symbols.My figures are never fully disclosed - their faces are partially obscured by bandages, chains, or tape. This concealment is an alternative form of visibility: the more a face is hidden, the clearer its suffering becomes. The same logic applies to landscapes: a deconstructed flag speaks more profoundly than one raised high.

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