No one is dead,
until he is forgotten.

You have a direct “sense of theater,” something that is not common. Your capacity for theatrical painting is distinctive and innate. Your sketches are naturally artistic and festive. Usually this is achieved through great effort, but you are able to do this with ease. I call this “Mozartian giftedness.” You are able to complete everything without difficulty, your “handwriting”—your painting manner—is artistic and musical, and this is God’s gift; one does not see sweat and does not hear groaning, both of which are unbearable in Art.

To the professionals, everything must be clear: both your talent and your technical abilities. --Abram Efros, Art historian, 1945

A. Balazovsky is a magician of color. It is necessary to assess properly—according to merit—the coloristic talent of A. Balazovsky: precisely the color, which he feels unusually subtly, constitutes the soul of his art. --L.V. Vladich, Art historian, 1968

In the singing rhythm of thematically distinct paintings, united by fantasy, musicality, and the expressivity of the Master, is disclosed the fundamental passion of the painter: Theater! Music! And regardless of which painting one observes, everywhere one feels the theatrical atmosphere and almost hears either an organ fugue or a song of joy. --Yu. Suyarko, film director, 1968

Profoundly professional, brightly artistic! Unusual themes, distinctive style. What is it? Fantasy? The grotesque characteristic of theater? Or a sui generis perception of real life? Whatever it may be, everything in it impresses, everything calls for joy. And how much music there is in your painting! Your exhibition cannot leave anyone indifferent. --Irina Savenko, writer, 1978

It is simply wonderful to celebrate one’s 70th birthday with such vigorous and beautiful works. You open up a whole world, a world that is new, mysterious, somewhat remote, and very convincing. --Yu. Lutskevich, painter, sculptor, 1978

If a gifted person has lived for seventy years and has been able to create such beauty out of his fantastical daydreams, it means that he is brilliantly gifted; one can bow to his soul, and one can wish that he live and create for many years to come! --Ye. Shipovich, musician 1978

Abram Balazovsky is a highly intelligent, musical, subtle, and erudite artist. Filmmakers really liked working with him. A.S. was loved by everyone. He infected everyone with his love for the profession, his love for people. Sincerely, generously, he found the best in works, in people… We did not even imagine what kind of a painter, colorist, poet he was… --Ariadna Perepelitsa. The Kiev television studio.

You see a wonderful world, disclosed by an artist. Extraordinary women’s portraits are also from the world of the beautiful. Theater, as if it were a living entity, becomes even closer to the viewer. --S. Zhukharevich, writer, 1985

Abram Semyenovich was a brilliant teacher. He not only could teach us how to draw, but with his help, we were exposed to the beauty of the world. A.S. was a wonderful graphic artist…
A. Balazovsky was not only a theater painter, no. It is enough to look at his creations in order to conclude that his art is much broader: it is original, strongly and distinctively sounding painting… --Yu. Zabashta, scholar, student of A. B. 1985

A student of Lentulov, Palmov, A. Balazovksy went his own way. He cannot be identified with the avant-garde of the 20’s and 30’s, with the Formalist painters. But Balazovsky is close to Mir iskusstva (World of Art), the art of Falk, of Tyshler. As painter-innovator, he made his own discoveries in the color, the texture of painting. Every one of his paintings is an image-symbol. His paintings emanate not only light, but also music. The artist idiosyncratically continues the traditions of world culture. It is a great fortune to see his paintings, and one would like the latter to become the heritage of a wide circle of viewers, particularly young people. One wants to believe that to the memory of Balazovsky will be dedicated new exhibitions, as well as new albums of his paintings. --Ida Zhuravskaya

We have been introduced to the wonderful world of one of the most theatrical painters of the Ukraine. The works of A. Balazovsky constitute a bright, mysterious, and distinctive world – a celebration of Theater in the widest sense. We are grateful for this theater, with which the artist has presented us, and which will always remind us of this wonderful artist’s bright image. --Colleagues of the State Museum of Theater, Music, and Film, 1985

To see and to explain a painter is not an easy task and, particularly, the works of A. Balazovsky, in which hidden is a subtle and poignant inner world – a world of high emotional culture and bright imagery. In his works there are depths, which have always distinguished genuine art. These depths are that for which it is so difficult to find words. --Ye. Rudminsky, artist-architect, student of A.Balazovsky. 1985.

Paintings, as well as graphic works of A. Balazovsky open before the viewer the doors to the magic world of beauty and wisdom. Pathos in this case is a homage to tradition, for Balazovsky was a painter of theater. --Oksana Lamonova, Art historian, 1999

Abram Balazovsky is a theatrical painter. This term has two meanings. First of all, he is a painter of theater, who decorates performances, and who, after the performance, fantasizes on the theme of the disappeared glamour (“Theater and the Viewer,” “Viewers,” “Juliette”). But besides this, the flavor of theater, festivity, and high spirits is present in his other works (“Tenderness,” “Two angels and a White Grand Piano,” the series called “Images”). “The whole world is theater”: Balazovsky agrees with this old aphorism, but it is difficult to say what is more characteristic of this saying – subtle playfulness or hidden tragedy. --O. Lamonova, 2001

Abram Balazovsky is one of the most talented and original Kiev artists of theater. He worked with painting more during the last years of his life. The paintings of Balazovsky are always a theatrical reminiscence and (or) a theatrical daydream (the latter more often than the former). Even so, unstaged performances become unwritten plays and unbuilt theaters – a whole world, enigmatic, sophisticated, and fragile (“Juliette,” “Van Cliburn,” “Masks”). --O. Lamonova, 2002

The art of painter A. Balazovsky undoubtedly belongs to the rather interesting phenomena in the art of the 20th century. --Irina Panchenko, Art historian, USA 2003

…A. Balazovsky was a happy person. So he thought. And whatever one says, there is no trick here (hence the bewilderment). And this is he, who was an orphan, soldier, who had been frequently hospitalized, who lived almost his whole life in communal apartments, a painter who was not recognized by the establishment, who did not receive any awards, who didn’t have an opportunity to display his works before a public audience, who did not go to Europe, to America, even if only to visit. He was happy. One should not doubt that. And yet, here a clarification is in order. One hopes that he did see Paris (the day of his death, he dreamily said to a friend: soon I will be flying above Paris). --Selim Yalkut, doctor of medicine, writer, 2002

Balazovsky, who devoted his whole life to art, created his own world of high emotional culture: a world of bright imagery, beauty and magic, a world of music and fairytales. In his compositions and portraits one can hear a monologue of extraordinary depth. --Bella Rubina-Portnoy, painter-architect, USA 2007