Mikhail Andreenko-Nechitaylo
Born into a family of Ukrainian nobles in 1894, Andreenko-Nechitaylo was able to study art in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), to travel to Europe when the 1917 Revolution broke out and to exhibit there, until he finally settled in Paris in 1923 where he stayed until his death in 1982. His modernist works range from cubism to surrealism to abstraction, while he was also a scenographer and writer. There are no works of his in public domains, but I would like to share one that I was once lucky to stumble upon in Paris and fell in love with, you can see it here.
Kateryna Bilokur
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| "King Spike", 1949 |
Bilokur, born in 1900, was a peasant girl whose parents could not afford to send her to school. She taught herself to paint, something her parents disapproved of. After being rejected to work at the theater which led to a suicide attempt, she was finally allowed to paint. It is said - and I love that little detail - that she made her own paint brushes from her cat's hair. Her gorgeously detailed, radiant and abundant flower paintings are the opposite of her biography that is full of deprivations. She never married, lived very modestly, has endured the brutal years of Fascist occupation. But in the 1950s, she finally received some recognition and awards, she was invited to Kyiv and Moscow, had exhibitions, artist friends and students. This fruitful phase of her life ended with her death in 1961.
Olexandr Bohomazov
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| "Stropping the Saws", 1927. |
Born in 1880, Bohomazov was a Ukrainian avant-gardist and art theoretician. The late 1800s and early 1900s were a very prolific time for the avant-garde in the Russian Empire, a loose union of likeminded intellectuals that were pushing boundaries, experimenting with styles and theories, detaching from realism - a movement despised and later eradicated by the Soviets. Bohomazov was most interested in Cubism and Futurism and had great success in these styles. Even though he used to be called the "Ukrainian Picasso", his oeuvre was mostly unknown in the Soviet Union - both because he was an avant-gardist and a Ukrainian (ironically, he was ethnically Russian, which again underlines the senselessness and idiocy of racism that, by the way, we're seeing again today). He died of tuberculosis in 1930.
Mykhailo Boychuk
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| "The Prophet Elijah", 1913 |
Boychuk was born in 1882 in the then Austrian-Hungarian territories and therefore was able to study art not only in Krakow but also in Munich and Vienna. After living and working in Paris (he had followers calling himself "Boychukists"), he moved to the Russian Empire and founded the Ukrainian Academy of Arts in Kyiv. His art was heavily influenced by medieval slavic church painting and the early Italian Renaissance. He fell victim of the so-called "Great Purge" and was executed, as was his wife, in 1937. At that time, the regime got rid of avant-gardists, intellectuals, anti-communists and anyone deemed an "enemy of the state", subsequently leading to mass terror with about 1.5 million people arrested, about half of them executed, the other placed in gulags. Many of Boychuk's murals were destroyed after his execution and only in 1991 did his works start to be exhibited to the public again.
David Burliuk
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| "Cossack Mamay", 1908 |
Burliuk, born in 1882, was, like Bohomazov, an avant-garde artist and author. His chosen style was Futurism - an originally Italian artistic movement, aiming to break with the past, attempting to depict modernity, movement, energy, dynamics. He studied in Munich and Paris; during the Revolution, he was in Siberia and the Ural Mountains, subsequently, he decided to leave the Soviet Union for good and moved to the United States, where he continued to write. He died in NYC in 1967.
Ivan Marchuk
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| "Moon Flowers", 1976 |
Born in 1936, Marchuk is one of the most famous living Ukrainian artists. He studied art in Lvyv, then moved to Kyiv. His paintings differed from the - at that time only - acceptable movement called socialist realism, he named this style "Plyontanism" from a word in Ukrainian dialect loosely translating to "weaving". These works, the fact that he had joined the artistic underground and spoke Ukrainian led to him being suspected of "Ukrainian nationalism" and put under KGB surveillance. His art wasn't recognized by the Soviet artists' union as well, making it extremely difficult for him to work, make a living and show his art. In 1989, he could finally emigrate to Australia, Canada and lastly, to the US. He moved back to Ukraine in 2001.
Maria Prymachenko
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| "A Dove has Spread her Wings and Asks for Peace", 1982 |
Possibly the most famous Ukrainian painter today, self-taught folk artist Prymachenko lived from 1909 to 1997. Even Pablo Picasso - whose judgement in many spheres might be irrelevant 😜, but who certainly did know art better than anyone - was reportedly blown away by her intuitive, imaginative, colorful and essentially very Ukrainian works. She enjoyed a good reputation in the Soviet Union, but never really received the credit she deserved. Her more critical, less joyous works, for instance those about the Tchernobyl disaster, were not shown in her lifetime. Today, her "Dove" (see above) has become a symbol of Ukrainian resilience, fight for freedom and of course, hope for peace. It has been reported some weeks ago, that the Russian army burned down the Ivankiv Museum that contained many of her works, it remains unclear if and how many could be saved.
Taras Shevchenko
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| "Kateryna", 1842 |
Shevchenko (1814-61) is considered the most important Ukrainian poet and founder of modern Ukrainian literature. Apart from writing, the former serf was also a renown romanticist painter. His writings in Ukrainian, that were in part anti-Tsarist, his membership in a revolutionary, pan-slavic organization led to his arrest in St. Petersburg. Tsar Nicholas I banned him from ever returning to Ukraine, and even from writing and painting and sent him to exile where he remained for 10 years (always bending the rules and getting in trouble). After the tsar's death, influential friends like Leo Tolstoi helped secure Shevchenko's return to St. Petersburg where he died of angina in 1861. His influence on the Ukrainian language and culture makes him one of the most dominant historical personalities of the country. The Shevchenko National Price is one of the highest honors to be awarded in Ukraine, I. Marchuk received it in 1997.
Tetyana Yablonska
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| "Morning", 1954 |
Yablonska (1917-2005) was possibly the most successful Ukrainian female painter during her lifetime. Contrary to Priamchenko and Bilokur, who were "only" painting still lives in a folk style that was deemed inferior than realism, Yablonska painted genre paintings of Soviet life that were generally highly regarded. She has received numerous awards and was well connected - even a member of parliament in the 1950s. And despite that, she, as the recipient of the Stalin Prize (one of the highest possible honors back then), wasn't afraid to speak out against the Socialist party when she felt that it was patronizing the arts; this episode got her in trouble, but only shortly. In one of her most famous paintings, "Morning" (see above), she painted the oldest of her three daughters practicing morning gymnastics, a portrait full of joyfulness and youth, which in a way also symbolized the end of Stalin's rule, and a certain sigh of relief for the Soviet people.
PS: all images are from WikiCommon and WikiArt.
PPS: If you want to know more, I have a whole series dedicated to Ukrainian art on my TikTok channel.
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