2005
Together with Vladimír Burjánek and graphic designer Ondřej Klos working on the book Paintings 1997 – 2006 / Looking back to the future.
The first event was organized in the Scigol Atelier, a public meeting of friends of music and painting, with Vadym Minchuk, Serhy Domoroslov and Sviatoslav Scihol performing in it. In August the guitarist and composer Štěpán Rak played in this Atelier to an audience of 75 people. This was the first time that he played his 14 variations on the theme of A. V. E. Wallenstein. He composed this music cycle after he had seen the cycle of paintings of the same title. The concert was also held to honour the sixtieth birthday of Mikhail Scigol. The programme was hosted by František Derfler.
2004
Joy resulting from the completion of re-building work in the former barn which was converted to an exhibition hall and chamber theatre. In collaboration with Martin Zajíček and Oľga Marie Pušová, a concept was created of a small cultural centre of the name ”Atelier Scigol“.
Provoked by the family of the painter Vladimír Komárek (1928–2002), he began work on a series of paintings entitled, “Even a Short Visit Will Please”. Dedicated to the memory of his great friend, this cycle was first exhibited at St. Giles Gallery in the church of Železnice in November 2004.
“A. V. E. Wallenstein or the Baroque Dreams of Albrecht Václav Eusebius” series was moved to the exhibition spaces of the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic.
On the day of the 370th anniversary of A. V. E. Wallenstein’s murder, during a commemorative event in the Carthusian monastery in Valdice, the exhibition was opened of the series of paintings entitled, “A. V. E. Wallenstein or the Baroque Dreams of Albrecht Václav Eusebius” in Valdice prison precinct. The exhibition lasted four months and was open to the public.
2003
Spontaneously, he started a cycle of paintings that was later to be called “A. V. E. Wallenstein, or the Baroque Dreams of Albrecht Václav Eusebius“. The cycle consisted of both small and large-size series inspired by the life of Wallenstein and conceived as meditations on the verge of dreams and reality. They were finished in late 2003. Together with the priest in Železnice, Josef Kordík, and Jaromír Gottlieb, the artist worked on a project of exhibiting the whole series in the church of the Carthusian monastery in Valdice, which has housed a prison for over a hundred years. This project was intended as a symbolical return of Wallenstein or his spirit to his original tomb, and likewise, as a commemorative act of reverence to the victims of the Thirty Years War.
2002
Finished the large-size paintings depicting Sporck and Braun, exhibiting them at Kuks Castle, where the idea of this subject had been born in 1993.
Along with his Czech fellow-citizens and all cultural world, he experienced the schocking devastating floods in the Czech lands. After the floods he painted a cycle of paintings entitled “Still Lifes with Flood” as a response to the threat to cultural heritage and hope of its saving. Part of the cycle is formed by the triptych “Amadeus, Prague, August 2002”, which he subsequently decided to present at the painters’ Biennial in Florence in December 2003.
2001
Most of his time was devoted to collaboration with Vladimír Komárek on his project of “The Stations of the Cross”, which Komárek started working on thirty years before. Along with the sponsor Miloš Starý, head of the Regional Museum and Gallery Jičín, Jaromír Gottlieb, the priest in Železnice, Josef Kordík, and Oľga Marie Pušová, they established an informal civic association called The Stations of the Cross. This association provided conditions for Vladimír Komárek so as to be able to paint a large-format cycle of the same title, to be mounted in the Baroque church of Ss. Peter and Paul in Konecchlumí in Jičín region.
In his studio in Železnice, he painted the first larger cycle of paintings, entitled “Nights in Železnice” and dedicated to Olga. He also started working on the cycle of large-format canvases with Sporck and Braun, whose subject had been fermenting a long nine years. This artistic period culminated with the exhibition in Staré Hrady in May 2001.
2000
In the course of the renovation of the house he fell down the rotten roof-truss and spent the following half-year in various hospitals and rehabilitation centres. However, the most efficient cure was his subsequent work at the house as bricklayer and carpenter. Spiritual support for him at that difficult time was provided by his Czech friends Miloš Starý, Petr Ježek and others, and likewise, Oľga Marie Pušová who had become his source of artistic and human inspiration.
1999
After a quarter of a century, the first exhibition was held in Kiev in the Tadzio gallery of Olena Jahodovska.
Having been granted Czech citizenship, he bought an Empire-style house in Zeleznice and started building his studio, a small theatre and an exhibition hall there.
Finished three years of work on a series of paintings “...I Am the Dancing House”. This series was presented in the ”Dancing House” in Prague and introduced by the architect Vlado Milunic, one of the designers of the building.
1998
Scigol left New York enriched by a new friendship with Vagrich Bakhchanyan. He spent three days talking to Mikhail Chemiakin on his farm in Claverack (New York) – later on, these conversations were published in the Xantypa magazine.
The first visit of the U.S.A., where the painter presented his cycle of paintings entitled The Sketchbook of Uncle Theo in Chicago and New York. The Chicago exhibition was organized by the daughter of Theo Sharnopolski to whose memory the cycle was dedicated. Arranged by Mikhail’s old friend Marek Zborovski, the New York exhibition was held in the Klamar House. The whole trip was full of encounters with people, from whom he had been separated for long years, or even decades: a friend from his young years, the artist Hirsh Diamant (Olimpia, Washington), the architect Mikhail Budilovski and the poet Alina Litinska (Chicago), the film director Andrey Zagdanski (New York), the painter David Miretski.
1997
During the year he worked on his own book “At the Mirror of Time (Paintings 1968–1997)”. Sponsored by Czech Telecom, it was published in the following year.
1996
Moved to Prague. There he was visited by a world-famous artist, Mihail Chemiakin, who went from Moscow to New York. He also made friends with Igor Pomerantsev, an editor of the Radio Free Europe and a poet. It was only in Prague that he could finally visit his favourite painter Viktor Pivovarov, who had moved there from Moscow in the 1980s.
1995
The elder son Sviatoslav, a fresh graduate of the academy of music in Kiev came to Bohemia for a study stay at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, and later stayed on. Now the painter and his two children are together.
His first visit to Israel, where since 1993 his brother Viktor and his family had been living. Together, they celebrated their “Hundredth Anniversary” on the coast of the Mediterranean.
1993
Recommended by Viktor Konečný and Jiří Seifert, he was admitted as a member of the Union of Czech Artists.
1992
Presented his paintings at solo exhibitions throughout Bohemia, in Slovakia, Germany and Austria. Friendship with the painter Vladimír Komárek, the author and script-writer Halina Pawlowska, the founder of the Andy Warhol Museum in Medzilaborce, Michal Byck; with the manager of Železnice Spa, Petr Ježek, the Jičín actor Martin Zajíček. His friends in Hradec Králové included the collector Stanislav Zídek, the singer Michaela Novozámská and her husband Ladislav, the artist Ludvík Vašina, the architect and poet Karel Mahrla, the painter Jiří Ščerbakov... He met the painter Karel Valtr from Tábor, and his family.
On humanitarian grounds he obtained a permit to stay in Czechoslovakia on a permanent basis. Daniel started attending a special school for deaf children in Hradec Králové. Michal lived and painted in a small room in that school.
1991
Second stay in Železnice. He had to decide about his own and his son’s future.
1990
Took his son Daniel for a three-months-stay at a Czech spa Železnice u Jičína, where was a convalescent home for children with polio. Returned to painting. Met the painter Vladimír Komárek. First exhibition in Czechoslovakia, in the Železnice Museum. The cure achieved visible progress in Daniel’s condition.
1988
Prepared a posthumous exhibition of his wife Marina. Along with her colleagues Setrak Baroianetz, Juri Levchenko and Alexander Babak finished her monumental works, and with the aid of the graphic artist Valentina Ivashchenko and photographer Igor Gilbo prepared Marina Khusid’s catalogue for publication.
Marina Khusid was killed in a traffic accident in Uzbekistan, where she was to attend
a symposium. She was buried in Kiev.
a symposium. She was buried in Kiev.
1982
Son Daniel was born to Michal and Marina, suffering from poliomyelitis. Hoping to find a cure, the parents took him to various Soviet hospitals, but to no avail.
1981
Intensive creative collaboration with Marina Khusid.
Made friends with the ceramist Marina Khusid (b. 1956); they started living together.
1980
Left home, lived in his studio. Got divorced.
1974
Admitted as a member of the Union of Ukrainian Architects.
1973
Study stay at the urban planning department of the College of Architecture in Moscow.
1972
His son Sviatoslav was born.
1970
Got married.
1967
Worked in the studio of the architect and painter Boris Lekar (in Jerusalem since 1990). The relationship between the teacher and his pupil grew into a life-long friendship. They collaborated on architectural and sculptural designs, painted in the open air (Pamir, northern Russia, the Caucasus...), visited the studios of eminent non-conformist artists (Leningrad: Viktor Levitin, Sergei Arshacuni and Mihail Chemiakin; Moscow: Mikhail Grobman, Oskar Rabin, Francisk Infante, Ilya Kabakov, Vasilii Sitnikov, Genady Bachurin, Vasilii Chuikov). Friendly relations with the Kiev painters Mikhail Vainstein and Anatoly Lymarev; the photographer Igor Gilbo; the ceramist Olga Rapai-Markish; the poet Georg Fenerli.
1964
Took evening courses at the College of Architecture in Kiev.
1958
At the secondary school he acquired practical knowledge of construction professions. After he finished school, he was employed in the Kievproject design institute, supervised by the architect Lev Katko.
Having finished the seventh class, he was admitted to a professional school of civil engineering. The last holidays at the seaside. On August 26, 1958, the family celebrated his and his brother’s coming of age (according to the Jewish tradition, at 13 years old). On the following day their nineteen-year-old sister Dora had not come back from a romantic Black Sea excursion, her boat disappeared in a storm.
1948
The mother takes care of Michal, Viktor and their sister Dora (1939), the father successively works as the director of Promstroiproject, as the main engineer, head of an architectural studio.
The family spends every summer in Odessa by the Black Sea.
The family spends every summer in Odessa by the Black Sea.
The Shchigol family returns to the Ukraine, to Kiev. They live in a two-bedroom flat in Leo Tolstoi Square.
1945
Chelyabinsk, Russia. Twins Viktor and Michal are born to the parents Mordko Shchigol and Sarah Pivchik from Odessa.