Andrej Denisenko

Visaginas, Lithuania

Painter | Art Educator | Cultural Organiser | Member of the Lithuanian Folk Artists’ Union

ARTIST BIO

Andrej Denisenko is a Lithuanian painter, art educator and cultural organiser based in Visaginas, Lithuania. For more than three decades, his professional practice has brought together painting, artistic education, exhibition-making and sustained cultural leadership.
A member of the Lithuanian Folk Artists’ Union since 1999, Denisenko has played an important role in the development of the artistic community of Visaginas and in connecting artists from Visaginas, Zarasai and Ignalina with Lithuania’s wider national cultural context.
His professional path combines the analytical discipline of technical education with a strong academic foundation in the arts. After receiving his first degree from the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute, now Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, he continued his studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Correspondence People’s University of Arts, ZNUI, in Moscow. He subsequently graduated from the Vilnius Academy of Arts, qualifying as an artist and art educator.
Working predominantly in oil painting, Denisenko demonstrates a versatile command of genres, artistic traditions and painterly approaches. His practice encompasses classical portraiture, still life, Lithuanian landscape, figurative composition and bold colouristic experimentation.
Across more than 200 oil paintings, he has developed a mature visual language distinguished by structural clarity, atmospheric light, expressive colour, material richness and psychological sensitivity. His works move between academic precision and painterly freedom, transforming familiar landscapes, objects and human figures into reflections on memory, time, dignity and belonging.
Alongside his studio practice, Denisenko has devoted more than thirty years to teaching fine art in Visaginas. He initiated the establishment of the Visaginas branch of the Open School of Art, Architecture and Design, ADDAM, under the Vilnius Academy of Arts. He served as its director for twelve years and later continued his involvement as an expert consultant from 2014 to 2025.
From 1999 to 2024, he led the Visaginas Artists’ Club Kvadratas. Through exhibitions, educational projects and regional collaborations, he played a pivotal role in strengthening the local artistic community and integrating the cultural life of Visaginas, Zarasai and Ignalina into Lithuania’s national art landscape.
Since 1994, Denisenko has organised and participated in numerous regional, national and international exhibitions in Lithuania and Latvia.
In 2002, he served as organiser, curator and exhibiting artist of the landmark representative exhibition of the Kvadratas Artists’ Club at the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania in Vilnius.
In 2014, he was a co-organiser and participant in the International Plein-Air Painting Symposium Lithuania through the Eyes of Foreign Artists, developed in collaboration with the Armenian Union of Lithuania in Visaginas.
His international activities also include the painting plein-air Lūdzu uz Ludzu in Ludza, Latvia, in 2018, and the international art plein-air Nūvads, kur atsaver sirsneibys vuorti in 2022.
In 2018, Denisenko contributed to the interior art curation of Lithuania’s first Courtyard by Marriott Vilnius City Center hotel. His original paintings and exclusive reproductions were integrated into the hotel’s public spaces by the international design studio Atellior.
In 2026, he was selected as a representative of the city of Visaginas for the anniversary folk art exhibition Metai įamžinti raštuose at Trakų Vokė Manor in Vilnius. The exhibition commemorated the 120th anniversary of the First Lithuanian Art Exhibition and the 60th anniversary of the Lithuanian Folk Artists’ Union.
Denisenko is a laureate and nominee of Aukso vainikas - the Golden Crown - Lithuania’s prestigious national folk art competition, receiving recognition in 2009 and 2020.
His works are held in private collections in Lithuania and abroad, as well as in the permanent art collection of the Ludza Local History Museum in Latvia. His painting Spring (Pavasaris) was officially acquired for the art collection of the President of the Republic of Lithuania.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My artistic practice is a lifelong dialogue between academic tradition, structural thinking and the expressive freedom of painting.
I do not see painting merely as the reproduction of the visible world. For me, it is a way of revealing its inner architecture—the relationships between form, light, colour, memory, silence and human presence.
My technical education taught me to understand structure, proportion and systems. My academic artistic training gave me a deep respect for drawing, composition and the discipline of observation. Over time, these foundations became inseparable from intuition, experimentation and the physical energy of paint.
I work predominantly in oil because of its extraordinary depth, flexibility and material richness. It allows me to move between transparent glazing and dense texture, between carefully constructed form and spontaneous gesture. The painting develops through a balance of control and discovery.
Colour is central to my artistic language. It does not simply describe the appearance of an object or landscape. It carries emotional, spatial and symbolic meaning. Through colour, I seek to create tension or tranquillity, evoke memory and reveal the internal rhythm of a person, place or object.
My practice encompasses portraiture, landscape, still life and figurative composition. I do not regard these as closed historical genres. Each offers a distinct way of reflecting on contemporary human experience.
In portraiture, I am interested not only in resemblance, but in psychological depth, human dignity and the visible trace of lived experience. I seek the inner light of a person rather than the surface of a face.
The Lithuanian landscape has become one of the central sources of my artistic thinking. Its restrained light, forests, fields, mists and seasonal transformations allow me to explore time, continuity, belonging and inner balance. Landscape, for me, is not simply a representation of place. It is a metaphysical and emotional space.
Still life offers another form of contemplation. Everyday objects, separated from their practical function, become witnesses of time, personal history and cultural memory. Through composition, colour and light, the ordinary can acquire symbolic and monumental significance.
Alongside my connection to academic tradition, I remain deeply interested in experimentation. I explore colour relationships, painterly surfaces, contrasts of texture and the tension between recognisable form and abstraction. Experimentation allows me to expand the emotional possibilities of traditional painting without abandoning its foundations.
My experience as an author and illustrator has also influenced my method. I often think of a painting as a visual text, a poetic fragment or a metaphor that reveals itself gradually through attentive viewing.
Teaching and cultural work have never been separate from my artistic practice. More than thirty years of working with students, artists and institutions have taught me to understand art as an open system of knowledge, continuity and exchange.
Creating an artistic community, mentoring younger generations, organising exhibitions and supporting regional artists are not secondary activities. They are extensions of my belief that art exists not only through individual works, but through the cultural environment built around them.
My paintings are addressed to viewers willing to slow down, observe and remain attentive to nuance. They do not seek to overwhelm through spectacle. Instead, they invite contemplation and a deeper encounter with light, colour, silence and the emotional meaning of apparently simple things.
I consciously avoid making works dominated by aggression, despair or hopelessness. Contemporary life already confronts people with constant tension, uncertainty and visual noise. My artistic response is based on beauty, dignity, vitality and hope.
For me, beauty is not a decorative escape from reality. It is a serious artistic and ethical force. It can restore sensitivity, renew attention and remind us of the possibility of transformation.
Within the context of AWAKENING, my paintings speak about the awakening of perception. I am interested not in dramatic transformation, but in the moment when a person begins to see the familiar world more deeply: the changing light of a landscape, the silent presence of another human being or the unexpected poetry of an ordinary object.
Through painting, I seek to transform local and deeply personal experience into a universal visual language - one capable of preserving memory, creating dialogue and affirming the enduring human need for beauty.
I believe art can do more than reflect the world. It can participate in making it more attentive, more connected and more humane.

“Art Reflects the World. Great Art Changes It.”

CURATOR NOTE

Aliona Muravskaja
Curator & Co-Founder of Nordic Curatorial Platform & Gallery

For me, Andrej Denisenko is not only one of Lithuania’s most respected artists, but also my teacher. He is one of those rare artists who has remained true to his artistic path throughout his entire life. Andrej constantly explores new techniques, studies different artistic approaches, and never stops searching for new directions in painting.
What has always impressed me most, however, is his extraordinary gift as a teacher. He has the rare ability to explain complex ideas in just a few simple words - words that stay with you for years. It is more than knowledge; it is the ability to inspire, build confidence, and encourage others to keep creating. That same energy of inspiration continues to guide my own work today.
It is a great honour for me to collaborate with Andrej today not as his student, but as his art partner. I am especially proud to see him among the artists of the AWAKENING project.