Vitaliy Shtanko (b. 1979)

Le Variazioni, oil on canvas, 50"x60"

Vitaliy Shtanko was born on December 25, 1979, in Drogobych Ukraine in a family of artists. He had a passion for an art from a very young age as watched his father spend hours working at the easel and looked through many mysterious and fascinating art books from his family’s home library.

At age of 10, Vitaliy enrolled into The Art College for Children. For the next four years, he studied various art techniques and methods experimenting with different media such as watercolor, gouache, oil, ink and clay. Learning to draw and paint from life was the goal of the college.

In 1997 Vitaliy enrolled at the L’viv National Academy of Arts in Ukraine where he practiced classical academic approaches to drawing and painting. In 2000 Vitaliy moved to Florence with his family to attend the school of book illustration and where he eventually met Daniel Graves. The high standards of discipline and love for traditional realism of the Florence Academy of Art attracted Vitaliy to the school. Meeting the European school style was both challenging and exciting.