Ivan Semiletov: The Family Duo

Young and creatively active artists Ivan and Anna represent the third generation of a renowned Belarusian fine arts dynasty, founded by Alexander Semiletov, one of the outstanding painters of the Soviet era.

Having received his professional education at the Akhremchik Republican College of Arts (1999) and the Belarusian Academy of Arts (2004), Ivan honed his craft and acquired the knowledge and practical skills he needed in the artistic, intellectually refined atmosphere of constant family collaboration. Ultimately, by combining his parents' work in his own work, he became unlike any of his predecessors, instead developing his own distinctive style and creating an original world of fantastical images and situations. Immersed in this world, the viewer easily engages in an intellectual game, reacting with reciprocal associations and their own conclusions.

Ivan's paintings always feature a wide range of personalities, from poetic and poignant to occasionally angular and almost alien. The artist discusses important philosophical issues using the vocabulary of professional naive art, which includes elements of cubism, surrealism, and abstraction.

Ivan joined the Moscow-based International Association of Artists "Sunny Square" in 2007. Since 2008, he has belonged to the Union of Artists of Belarus.

By appealing to the viewer's associative thinking and cultural memory, they subtly transport them into the artist's imaginative world, where reality and fantasy enable one to break free from the constraints of stereotypical ideas of the world and return to an immediate and living perspective of objects and phenomena.

Ivan takes part in both national and foreign art shows. The National Art Museum of Belarus, the Museum of Modern Art in Jersey City, USA, as well as private collections in the USA, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Italy, Syria, Russia, and several other nations, have his artwork.