Bohdan Soroka is considered an artist of national significance. He created illustrations for Ihor Kalynets’s poetry collection The Opening of the Vertep (published in Switzerland). These avant-garde engravings, which employed folk archetypes, became known as Folklore Motifs. They were followed by the cycle Ukrainian Mythology, in which the artist explored Ukrainian folk customs and demonology, borrowing formal treatment, spatial solutions, and rhythmic principles from ancient folk engraving.
In the winter of 1971, Soroka’s works were shown at the exhibition Contemporary Ukrainian Graphics in Philadelphia, New York, and Cleveland. A year later, the participants of the exhibition were attacked in the press, beginning with Literaturna Ukraina. Soon afterward, Soroka was publicly denounced at a special meeting of the monumental art section of the Lviv branch of the Union of Artists of Ukraine. In the spring of 1972, after the issue Book Sign of the Sixtiers with Soroka’s bookplate on the title page was published (printed in the USA), the KGB opened a criminal case against the artist. Soroka was banned: his works were not exhibited, and his name was not mentioned in the press for a decade.
Soroka’s graphic style is marked by harsh contrasts: against a perfectly white or black background, figures emerge as if under theatrical lighting, with light and shadow modeled without intermediate tones. His images are enriched by expressive facial expressions — horror, mad joy, despair, and more.
He worked on graphic illustrations for the works of Lesia Ukrainka, Roman Ivanychuk, Vasyl Stefanyk, Taras Shevchenko, and Ivan Koshelivets.
A revolutionary step in terms of composition and graphic language was his cycle Emblems and Symbols (1996–1998), in which Soroka introduced the semantics of the “metaphysical room”, the mirror, and “mannequin-people”, combining several contexts in a single composition. In this way, the artist sought to “mark” the beginning of the information technology era, with its risk of losing eternal moral values.
Throughout his career, he received numerous awards: the prize of the International Ex Libris Competition in Vilnius; the First Prize at the H. Yakutovych Competition in Kyiv; and a medal at the 13th International Biennial of Small Graphics and Ex Libris in Ostrów Wielkopolski, Poland.
In 2014, Bohdan Soroka’s memoirs were published, illustrated with a retrospective of his graphic works. His works are preserved in the collections of major Ukrainian museums in Lviv, Kyiv, Kaniv, and Kolodiazhne, as well as in museums abroad, including Toronto, New York, Chicago, Brussels, Vilnius, and Munich.