Forest Sculpture Museum, Yabluniv

The picturesque village of Yabluniv is home to one of the most amazing museums in Prykarpattia, the Forest Sculpture Museum. The museum offers viewers an exhibition of root-plastic works, which is quite unusual for many visitors. This museum was founded in 2008. The founder and permanent director of the museum is a master woodcarver Igor Fartushnyi. The creation and operation of the museum has met with a strong response from both the local population and tourists, as well as from the management and local business.

Forest sculpture is a complex tandem of nature, imagination and human skill. It is this combination of a dead forest root found in nature and living creativity that makes root sculpture an art form. The artist of forest sculpture dominates nature, obeying it only, or, more precisely, drawing material for his figures and images from it.

The museum's exhibits are creations of nature, a reflection of the pristine beauty of the Carpathian region. I. Fartushnyi allows us to take a fresh look at the surrounding reality, to see the wonderful in the everyday and involuntarily touch the perception of our Slavic ancestors. Each object is a snag or a remnant of a tree bark of a bizarre shape. The wood was not varnished or processed, which involuntarily transports the viewer to the ancient times of Kievan Rus. Each sculpture resembles ancient idols - churas with stern faces of gods and spirits of wildlife. More than a hundred exhibits take the viewer to the world of the unknown and mysterious past of our people.

Every person has their own unspoken, little-known side. Especially if this person is a teacher. Ihor Fartushnyi's unspoken side is his forest sculpture. What does not impress, does not attract the attention of ordinary people in nature, finds its new life in the hands of this creator. A true artist, not a craftsman-stylist, Ihor Anatoliyovych finds his future poetic sculptural creations under the wrinkles of fancy roots, fragments of trees, growths, rhizomes, cones, and tinder fungi.

Igor Fartushnyi's root sculpture is an alloy of love and bitterness, hope and madness, ridiculous and magical, funny and original sin. It is his own individual philosophy, self-expression, his vision of the world in its ancient, everyday, historical and even shamanic hypostases. Contemplating the exhibition, you can often catch yourself in a double feeling. The expressiveness of the artist's works sometimes does not require reflection: they excite, delight, and enjoy. However, among the large number of works, there are also those that make you think, because they themselves mean something great, unknown, secret, divine.

The beautiful is always strange. Of course, every masterpiece created by nature is perfect in itself, so Ihor Anatoliiovych tries to make as few changes to the sculptural forms as possible, to preserve their originality and originality.

Special attention should be paid to those figures that are born in the author's studio by design, patience, imaginative thinking, and creative dedication. The craftsman spends all his free time carving ordinary, at first glance, pieces of wood to give them the shape of eternity and to present them on the altar of true art. Then the sculptor's works - figures with luxurious female outlines, birds, miracle animals, real and mythical images of people, bizarre creatures - fascinate everyone with their imperishable look. For example, next to the white bust of a woman, there is a magical creature whose voice and smile we will try in vain to hear. In another work, in some strange creature, someone has brought together three girls who foreshadow fetus, maturity, and then family and withering. It is truly a miracle!

The museum is open all year round. Every month new bright exhibits appear, collected by the careful hands of a master. Natural paints used in the decoration of wooden sculptures add color to each exhibit.

Visit the charming exhibition to enjoy the pristine beauty of nature and get new vivid impressions. This exhibition will definitely not leave indifferent any connoisseur of national culture and wildlife.

Igor Fartushnyi's collection includes hundreds of works, and many more are in the process of improvement and completion. To visit the museum is to enter the mysterious wonderland of the forest extravaganza. So do not deprive yourself of the opportunity to see and feel the state of mind of Igor Fartushnyi's forest sculpture!

Working all days. Opening hours: from 9:00 to 18:00. Lunch break: from 13:00 to 14:00.