Viktoria Adkozalova builds her large-format canvases from layered grounds, glazes, texture and gold leaf — surfaces where the human figure carries vulnerability, memory and transformation. Lately, she's been working to strip that language down to what matters most.
Viktoria Adkozalova — married name Viktoria Lubenets — was born in 1987 in Feodosia, Crimea, Ukraine. She received her first art education at the Ivan Aivazovsky Art School, later studying at the Faculty of Design at Kherson National Technical University under Halyna Sorokhan, and at the M. P. Drahomanov National Pedagogical University in Kyiv. Her creative practice took shape within the context of Ukraine's contemporary art scene. Since 2022, she has lived and worked in Munich, Germany.
She works across painting, graphics and mixed media, and periodically turns to VR and installation. The foundation of her practice remains large-format canvases, built up through multi-layered grounds, glazing, texture and metal leaf. Her work explores the relationship between the human condition, memory and transformation, combining figurative imagery, organic form and an experimental painted surface, where the materiality of the paint itself carries as much meaning as the subject. Her paintings are held in private collections across Europe and North America. She continues to develop her own painterly language, exploring the interplay of figuration, abstraction, space, movement and material.
Right now, she's developing that practice further — combining figurative painting, material experimentation and an exploration of human emotional states, with vulnerability, inner tension, closeness and transformation at the center of her attention. In recent years she has worked with the human figure, animals and symbolic imagery, combining them with texture, gold and multi-layered paint; these elements remain an important part of her artistic language.
"I don't aim to illustrate a specific story. I create images in which the human figure becomes a carrier of emotional state, memory and inner change."
Increasingly, she's interested in making her painting more laconic and open. She works with large painted masses, space, the movement of the figure and the materiality of the paint, gradually shedding what's unnecessary so attention rests not only on the human image but on the process of painting itself.
What matters to her is that a painting leaves room for interpretation. Rather than illustrate a specific story, she builds images in which the human figure becomes a carrier of emotional state, memory and inner change.
More of her work can be found at adkozalova.com and on Instagram @adkotori.