Maria Savchenko (b. 1982, Donetsk, Ukraine) is a visual artist based in Lisbon. Her practice is grounded in painting as a critical and thoughtful process — one that reflects on transformation, resilience, and memory through materiality and gesture. While painting remains central, her work expands into collage, sculpture, and spatial installation, forming a transmedial approach that explores the thresholds between image, object, and environment.
Savchenko works in both abstract and expressive representational modes, drawing from personal experiences of displacement and renewal. Her compositions are often built through layering — of fabric, thread, canvas, found materials — evoking fractured landscapes and emotional terrains. Across her practice, she explores the tensions between presence and absence, visibility and concealment, making space for ambiguity and intuitive response.
Her recent works include large-scale scrolls and folding screen sculptures, which examine movement, fragmentation, and the temporal dimension of perception. These pieces position painting not as a static medium, but as an evolving field of inquiry — one that inhabits physical space and engages with the viewer’s body. Her process is deeply reflexive, shaped by repetition, improvisation, and the dialogic nature of materials.
Trained at the Donetsk Art Academy, Savchenko also holds an MA in Linguistics, with further studies in contemporary painting and drawing at Chelsea College of Arts and Central Saint Martins in London. Her linguistic background informs her sensitivity to visual and semantic nuance, while her cross-cultural trajectory reflects an independent and self-directed artistic evolution.
She has exhibited in Portugal, Brazil, and the United States, and is a member of the Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes (SNBA) in Lisbon. In 2021, she founded Atelier das Artes in Brasília — a studio and exhibition space committed to collaborative and research-based art practices. Her work continues to engage in a collective conversation on meaning, situating personal narrative within the broader discourse of contemporary abstraction and post-migration aesthetics.
Her works are held in the public collections of O MAU – Museu de Arte Urbana in Oeiras, Taguspark, and in the permanent archive of A BIALE – Bienal Internacional do Alentejo.
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Maria Savchenko is an active member of the Sociedade Nacional de Belas-Artes (SNBA) in Lisbon, Portugal — a historic institution dedicated to supporting and promoting contemporary visual artists through exhibitions, education, and cultural exchange.
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