Date of Birth: April 20, 1964;Place of Birth: Krivoy Rog, the Ukraine.

EDUCATION: State Grekov Art College, Odessa, the Ukraine;Training Course, Art and Industry Institute, Kharkov, the Ukraine; Shevchenko Pridnestrovie State University.

WORK EXPERIENCE: Director, “Salko” Design Company;Cultural Affairs Advisor, Ministry of Foreign Affairs;Vice-President, International Arts and Culture Professionals Association;Founder and Organizer, Pridniestrovie’ “Kam Art” International Artists Symposium;Organizer and Coordinator, Right Reverend Andrey Roublev International Artists Symposium, St. Petersburg, Russia;Member of the Creative Unions of many countries.

The Full Member of Academic Senate, International Academy of Modern Art, A.I.A.M.,Rome, Italy;The Full Member, Peter's Academy of Arts and Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia;The Honour Member, National Academy of Fine Arts, Brazil;The Honored Art Worker, Ukraine;Winner, Mikhailiuk International Award, Ukraine;Winner, Panteleymon Koulish International Award, Ukraine;Holder, Crystal Sphere, “POAART for Peace”, Slovenia;1st Award Winner, “Marina” International Biannual Contest, Ukraine;Winner, two 1st Awards, International UNESCO Ex-Libris Competitions, Romania;Holder, Order of Michael the Archistrategos, Order of Gold Cross,Order of Glory and Honor, Ukraine;The Cross Award, Cossack Brotherhood "For the revival of spirituality,charity and mercy ", USA, Canada;Silver Medal, International Cultur Prize «Medusa Aurea Trophy», Rome, Italy;Gold Medal, International Art Competition NAFA, Brazil;Honor Badge for Substantial Arts and Culture Advancement Contribution;Merit Award, Palm Art Award, Art Domain Leipzig, Germany.

WORKS HELD IN PUBLIC COLLECTIONS IN: Russia, Moldova, The Ukraine, Crimea, South Assetia, Abkhazia, Romania, Armenia, Turkey, Germany, Slovenia, Italy, Indonesia. WORKS HELD IN PRIVATE COLLECTIONS IN: Moldova, the Ukraine, Israel, Bulgaria, Germany, Slovenia, France, USA. Took part in over 200 exhibitions, with 30 of them — one-man exhibitions.

INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY OF MODERN ART IN ROME, ITALY: "Have learnt art and scientific achievements of Mr.Yuri Salko, wanting to testify respect and official recognition of high endowments, which highlights he in terms of intellect and knowledge, he recognized The real member of the Academic Senate. The artist, having reached maturity in the noble art of classical painting, looked at him with fresh modern look. International Academy of Modern Art, recognized his work highest score and assigns it to Guild of the Academic Senate. Francesco de Benedetta, Ph.D. President of A.I.A.M. International Academy of Modern Art."

THE STATE HERMITAGE MUSEUM: "A new type of art, as it develops, has a large choice of venues to follow—and all of these venues lead into the unknown. And it is tradition, hard work and talent that guide the artists in their quest to determine which venues are right for them and most appealing. These notions can be combined under the all-encompassing notion of a “Master.” Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director, The State Hermitage Museum."THE STATE RUSSIAN MUSEUM:" May I use this chance to comment on the high technical quality of this art work. Furthermore, may I commend you on being sensitive to the problems of spirituality and pains of the modern life. It is clear that you, as an artist, will keep developing your art far into the future, reaching new creative horizons. Aleksander Borovsky. PhD, Fine Arts, Head, Newest Art Trends Department, The State Russian Museum."

FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY MUSEUM-MEMORIAL: "I’ve seen a large number of paintings exhibited on these walls, but few of them have impacted me in such a powerfully emotional way as these ones. I believe the themes of these paintings closely reflect the writer’s [Dostoyevsky’s] thoughts. This is truly the best kind of art ever. My heart-felt gratitude goes out to Yury Salko, the paintings’ author. Dmitry Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Grandson."

THE BENOIS FAMILY MUSEUM: "The author recreates dramatic consciousness, expressed, in its highest form, on his monumental works of art—monumental by the generous volumes of engrained pathos. The latter has been expressed, at different times, by way of turning to the Biblical themes. Mr. Salko was able to create his art in such a way that his paintings don’t reflect any ever-changing life energies or accidental, spur-of-the-moment impressions. Mr. Salko’s art exists in a completely different coordinates system– that of eternal relations and revelations. Having arrived to the amazingly-high art mastery levels, the painter utilizes the art methods characteristic of the 20th Century art, which may go unnoticed by the novice spectators. Tatiana Vergoun, Director, The Benois Family Museum."

THE NATIONAL MUSEUM IN LVIV: "In his pictures Yuri Salko has an active conversation with the problems of the modern society and even, in some kind, forecasts the tomorrow of the next century and millennium. The high mastery, individual style, original perception of the world puts Yuri Salko among the artists defining topic and style tendencies in fine arts. Vasiliy Otkovich, PhD Candidate, Fine Arts, Museum Director, Ukraine Shevchenko State Prize Laureate, Chair, Byzantology Department, Lviv’ Ivan Franko State University."

ENTHNOLOGY INSTITUTE, NATIONAL ACADEMY OF THE UKRAINE: "The art exhibition of Yuri Salko proved the variety of turns of the Ukrainian creative mind’s functioning and complete, polyphonic, aesthetic platform where the new spiritual qualities of graphic are tried to be found. There’s only one author but one can pay attention to the rich panorama of questions asked of the modern world, to a strong will to embrace the eternal mysteries of mankind through the universal symbols, through the penetrating reading of texts from “eternal books”, through the artistic materialization of sensuality. Courageously and non-typically, Yuri Salko enters the extra-complete intellectual material. He finds his own formulas, laconic brevities, his own signs of the things that are taken as social values and moral experience. Some topics are saved in spectators’ minds as definite numbers of just revealed cosmic energy. Thoughtful attitude towards technical and technological methods and integrity of seeing the stylistic conception of every topic show the young artist’s professional maturity and enormous creative potential." Roman Yatsiv, PhD Candidate, Fine Arts, Deputy Director.

THE UKRAINIAN ACADEMY OF ARTS: "I want to assure the society that you’ll receive the great esthetic delight, while having a contact with the creative work of Yuri Salko. He is a deep-thinking artist who gets inside the everyday life, inside those problems which exist through some definite associations, I even can say biblical, but these works of art are absolutely modern and they are fulfilled on the very high level. Emmanuil Mysko, Academician, People’s Artist of the Ukraine, President, Lviv Arts Academy."

MICHAILIUK INTERNATIONAL AWARD COMITTEE: "Characters, presented in the album, obtain special emotional significance and multi-associative content. They are marked by individuality of author’s materialization of eternal problems and are filled with human senses. Turning to the problems of mankind the author finds his own ways of materialization of the questions of existence, having his own reaction on the events and phenomena of last and present. The works of art are taken as a reflection of painful searches of the truth, as sounds of moral experience, as recollecting of some biographical facts of the author. And the sources of inspiration are the things, that worry the souls of people today, that find the unique interpretation of the fates of our generation, joy and anxiety, discovers and hopes of the beginning of the 21st century. Mr. Salko the Painter can be characterized by the following personal traits: High professional mastery, active social work dealing with cultural and spiritual rebirth, consolidating creative connections with different countries of the world, significant contribution towards mankind unification in the name of its progress and prosperity." Dmitriy Lomachuk, Committee Chairman.

CONSOLIDATED TIRASPOL MUSEUM: "The end of the 20th--beginning of the 21st century countenances are highly symbolic and meaningful; they exist at the turn of the times. They carry with them a hint of magnanimity and tenderness, aggression and evil; they bring with them a sense of expectation of kindness and light. People can be, and always and inevitably are, refined and uncouth, rude and respectful, reprobate and holy. This is what the Bible parables, the ever precious and wise, are all about; and this is what Mr. Yury Salko’s paintings are about, with bitter epiphanies and doubts vividly depicted in them. It is to people, to their sinful and saintly sides, that the author is extending his reflections, words of guidance and expectations of common human prudence and good deeds. The artist wishes for us, human beings, to exhibit those qualities. And I am hopeful that they’ll serve as the proverbial magic keys, unlocking a new millennium for us all, and we shall lend those wishes a due listening ear. Alla Melnitchiuk, Distinguished TMR Art Professional, Director, Consolidated Tiraspol Museum."

ON THE WAY TO CLEAR SOURCES OF ART. Somehow it happened in the twentieth century that a lot of creators of the different countries have decided to refuse such categories in the art as the idea, the content, the image, spirituality, beauty... All these qualitative thousand-year purchases of the mankind for some reason suddenly appeared as though become obsolete. They have been declared to be out-of-date, unnecessary. Some have even considered, that they harm to the modern approach to the creativity, are as like a dominant of other kinds of a culture, especially literature, etc.

New art, avant-garde and modern art, create only within the limits of purely formal categories, categories which are unique to deserve a complete attention of masters of the real art, art which is free from any restrictions, except for these, just established frameworks. The frameworks, in the greater degree aloud enough, regulate essentially the creative process. Declaring its ideological sources to be in ancient currents of sign, symbolical, not imaging art, it was planned, leaving position of the modern “world of mechanics", to create to these techniques its own aesthetics, its own creative system, its own symbolism, its own anthology.

Really there was said a lot about a new materiality, a new concept of beauty, about antologization of modern art. And indeed, some kinds of modern art, especially abstractionism, which has limited its searches in the limits of the cultivation of the art forms, has given much for the culture of XX century: constructive architecture, modern urbanities of cities, aesthetics of buildings of the industrial enterprises, modern architecture of administrative and trading edifices, modern clothes, modern advertising, etc. The abstractionism has not disregarded any side of life of a modern person – it, neglecting spirituality, has not given only masterpieces of the fine arts. Being in movement almost a whole century, it, as a spiritual-creative culture, actually had lost itself, and the art appeared further on a way of search of its self-expression, on a way of search universal "I".

So many of just that kind or similar ideas were casted over by the masterpieces of a Ukrainian artist who works and creates in the capital of Transdniestria Tiraspol, Yuri Salko.

The artist Salko himself is a generated creative individuality with its own creative face, its own, inherent thoughtful nature, system of creative-philosophical thinking. Yuri Salko does not ignore XX century art purchases, in particular, avant-gardism, abstractionism, etc.

However, his simultaneously excited and counterbalanced, creative character is not satisfied with the compositions of cleanly far-fetched, indifferently dry and any, graphical formal combinations or color correlations.

His spiritually rich creative nature filled with desire of philosophical, wholly mankind creative expression, is directed to disclosing deep human criteria of our present by the ways of graphic symbols created and coded by culture of mankind during millennia. These eternally existing, as a human society itself, the ancient truths are called by the creator, as a fundamental principle of thinking, ethics and morals of the person of our present. To the same extent the artist scoops both from sources of Christian belief, and from the antique, pre-Christian sources where he meets a huge amount of analogies, direct universal moral-ethical principles and positions.

The artist has passed a hard way of creative becoming, a way filled with bitter disappointments and failures. However, due to the congenital persistence of character and creative will of the creator, he managed to achieve the end of vocational training and coming into being as a creative individuality. Yuri Salko is a modern artist, the person persevering and initiative, nowadays he has great creative life lengths, participation in many arts exhibitions in Moldova, Ukraine, Russia and abroad.

His creation is interpreted as something much unexpected. The unexpected in the creative-philosophical approach to open problems, peripetias of human spirituality that is the basic, penetrating theme of creativity of the master.

It is interesting, that an obvious, in works of the artist, ideological syncretism of Christianity and heathenism shocks no one, in fact the one or the other ideologies were recognized by the same persons and the same peoples. While forming any art image the master lacks an obvious mythology symbols in his hands, then he creates his own which in his artworks get accustomed easy with traditional, it is possible to say, that Yury Salko is also the creator of its own graphic mythology.

It is obvious, that in this small note where an attempt of the characteristic of the common style and philosophical figurative orientation of creativity of the artist is made, questions could arise. One of them – to which art-creative direction it is possible to attribute the artworks of Yuri Salko?

If approaching from the positions of the universal creative art over systems which, as it is known, there are three: these are arts anthological, idealistic and sensual, then, in Salko’s creation we deal, first of all, with the anthological images based on symbols, incorporated with a sensual-romantic creative vision, inherent to an individual nature of the artist.

I should mention that, despite of his rich creative experience, the creator in the given period is at an initial stage of a creative way, a stage which further will move ahead by deepening existing and searching of new ways of creative expression. This persevering creator will constantly search for the new invariant embodiments of already realized and a new figurative idea that is a characteristic, eventually, features of the individual creative way, which name is “the Way of talent”.

Dmitry KRVAVICH, National Artist of the Ukraine, Laureate, State of Ukraine Shevchenko Award, Professor, Vice-President for Science Affairs, Lviv Arts Academy.