In 1986, he graduated from the Ivan Fedorov Ukrainian Printing Institute (now the Ukrainian Academy of Printing) in Lviv, specializing in graphic arts. In the 1980s, he worked as a restorer and icon painter, decorating churches in the Lviv, Ternopil, and Vinnytsia regions. This experience in sacred art and craft practice deeply shaped his later painting style.
From the early 1990s, Yahoda consistently developed a form of “diary” painting that incorporated handwritten fragments, autobiographical motifs, and Christian or apocalyptic allusions. Many of his projects combined a synthesis of poetry, painting, and performance. He collaborated with director Attila Vidnyanskyi and presented his works abroad, notably in Austria (Graz, Cultural City Network). As a poet, he published several collections and performed his texts in live, performative formats.
His solo exhibitions include shows in Poznań, Warsaw, Rzeszów, and Wrocław (1992); Miroslav Jahoda. Obrazy at the Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art in Medzilaborce, Slovakia (1997); exhibitions at the Dzyga Gallery in Lviv (2003, 2006); Life at KhudGraf Gallery in Kyiv (2009); the presentation of his painting Holodomor at the Boim Chapel in Lviv (2016); the retrospective Am I Here — or There?! at the Lviv National Art Gallery (2019); and the posthumous exhibition YA + GOD = A at the National Art Museum of Ukraine in Kyiv (2020).
During his lifetime, Yahoda remained more of a “cult” figure within the local scene, but after his death he received broader institutional recognition through major retrospectives and critical publications. He authored poetry collections such as Return to Portland and A Walk into Darkness. Critics describe him as one of the key artists of the Lviv underground and a “painter and poet of existential courage,” whose works merge the mystical, autobiographical, and social within a raw and nervous visual language.
Yahoda’s works are held in private collections in Ukraine and abroad.