Igor Shipilin

About Igor Shipilin

Crimean rooftops, sea light and old streets in a painter’s hands

Igor Shipilin is a Ukrainian painter born in Sevastopol, Crimea, in 1961.

“The picturesque old curvature of the Crimean streets, chaotic jumble of buildings, covered tiled roofs, balconies, staircases, passages through which to view the sky, the sea themselves suggest the artist’s perspective.”

Igor Shipilin graduated from Sevastopol Children’s Art School in 1977, and he continued his studies at The Repin Institute in Leningrad and at The Moscow State Academy of Printing, where he graduated in 1999, recieving a strong foundation in academic art traditions.

Igor Shipilin is considered one of the leading contemporary landscape masters of the region, and his paintings represent the romance of the Crimean landscape, with contemplative scenes of historical significance and nature that are both real and poeticized by the artist.

Igor Shipilin is an active and respected member of the Crimean art scene, serving as the chairman of the regional artist’s union in Sevastopol, and he holds a diploma merited by the Russian Academy of Art and has the title of an Honored artist of Crimea.

Igor Shipilin founded the League of Watercolors of Crimea in 2001, and he has been exhibiting actively since 1989, including a series of exhibitions in London, and he has been a member of the National Artists’ Union of Ukraine since 1994.

• Born in 1961 in Sevastopol, Crimea.
• Graduated from the Moscow State Academy of Printing in 1999.
• Founder of the League of Watercolors of Crimea in 2001.
• Chairman of the Sevastopol organization of the National Artists’ Union of Ukraine.
• His works are held in The Hermitage Museum and other major collections.

Igor Shipilin’s solo exhibitions have been held in the Sevastopol Art Museum in 1992, 1996, 2001, and 2006, and the main subject of his work is the lyrical Crimean landscape, freely owning drawing, composition, and color to transfer his admiration for the romance of Crimean antiquity through a modern sense of the world.

Igor Shipilin’s artworks are held in The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Sevastopol Art Museum of M.P. Kroshitsky, the Simferopol State Art Museum, and in private collections all over the world, reflecting his reputation as a master of Crimean landscape painting and his significant contribution to the region’s artistic heritage.

Art Category Fact: The Crimean School of Academic Art is a regional tradition that emerged in the 19th century, combining the techniques of the Russian Academy with the unique light and landscape of the Crimean peninsula, and it has produced many notable artists who have captured the beauty of the Black Sea coast and its historical sites.

“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” Edgar Degas