Attila Vencel

Attila Vencel was born on July 14, 1972, in the Eastern Slovak Lowlands as the eldest of three sons to parents of Hungarian descent. Today, he is a renowned artist, painter, and instructor who lives and works in Ostrava. As an instructor in his painting classes, he helps aspiring artists develop their creativity and kickstart their artistic growth.

He draws inspiration from his love of the landscape and nature, with which he has been closely connected since childhood. He is deeply attuned to their delicate harmony, which he strives to discover and share not only in his art but also in his relationships with people and the environment. He views this process as an endless journey through life—a search for ever-greater levels of harmony.  

Attila Vencel was significantly influenced by the 19th-century Impressionist movement, whose leading figures included Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Edgar Degas. He draws further inspiration from California Impressionist painters such as William Keith, Benjamin Chambers Brown, and Selden Connor Gile, as well as from the work of Czech artists—Antonín Slavíček, Václav Radimský, František Kaván, Julius Mařák, and Augustin Mervart. Among Russian masters, he was particularly drawn to the works of Korovin, Polenov, Ayvazovsky, Levitan, Repin, and Shishkin.

Attila Vencel is self-taught, though his approach to painting and technique has been significantly influenced by the Russian painter Igor Sakharov. In early 2017, he met with Sacharov in Moscow and subsequently spent several days painting with him in the picturesque town of Pereslavl-Zalessky on the shores of Lake Pleshcheyevo.  

He specializes primarily in oil painting. The dominant themes of his paintings are landscapes, nature, and flowers. In his abstract work, he works with geometric shapes, areas of color, and texture. He enjoys experimenting with techniques, painting with his fingers, a brush, a cloth, and a palette knife, and sometimes combines oil paints with acrylics. His style lies somewhere between Impressionism and Realism—a sort of “crossover” of influences from the visual arts, music, his philosophy of life, and his relationship with nature.  

“I strive to ensure that my work always contains a touch of poetry and lyricism. What I create reflects my romantic soul, which sets the tone.”

Attila Vencel