Ivan Ostafiichuk is an outstanding painter and master of book graphics. His output includes prints, easel graphics in his own combined technique, book illustrations, and paintings of a sharply expressive character. He created illustrations for works by Vasyl Stefanyk, Lesia Ukrainka, Dmytro Pavlychko, Taras Shevchenko, Marko Cheremshyna, Lina Kostenko, and others.
He produced large graphic cycles such as Hutsul Legends and Summer Impressions. A landmark achievement was a major cycle of monotypes based on Ukrainian folk songs, considered one of the peaks of Ukrainian graphic art in the second half of the 20th century.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Ostafiichuk explored more radical, expressionistic, and sharpened forms, finding ways to visualize the poetic texts of Mykola Vinhranovskyi, Lina Kostenko, Ivan Drach, and the “nuclear” symbolism of Shevchenko. These striking shifts in his artistic approach coincided with growing pressure from state authorities, creating discomfort in his life. Having renounced the title of Merited Artist of Ukraine, Ostafiichuk emigrated in 1987 to Croatia and later to Canada, where he remained until 1992. Upon returning to Ukraine in 1992, he settled in Lviv, resuming his artistic vision and expanding his primary graphic specializations to include watercolor and oil painting. By the 2000s, a substantial collection of his works had coalesced into a cohesive conceptual body entitled My Ukraine.
Ostafiichuk’s works have been repeatedly exhibited at regional, national, all-Union, and international art exhibitions since 1963. Solo exhibitions were held in Lviv, Ternopil, Khmelnytskyi, Kyiv, Zagreb, Cleveland, Rochester, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Saskatoon. His works are held in the National Art Museum of Ukraine in Kyiv, the National Museum in Lviv, the Lviv Art Gallery, the Museum of Arts of Prykarpattia in Ivano-Frankivsk, the Canadian-Ukrainian Art Foundation in Toronto, and the Ukrainian Museum in New York.
Ivan Ostafiichuk continues to uphold the fundamental values of Ukrainian identity, understanding it as both a psychological and moral-ethical category.