Ukrainian painting and art in general is an incredibly rich work of Ukrainian artists that we should be proud of. But, unfortunately, we are not proud, because we often do not know about the existence of this addition. We have chosen only ten works of different Ukrainian artists, and this is a good reason to familiarize yourself with their work in more detail. It will be especially interesting for those who are learning to paint with oil paints.
And if you want to delve into the history of Ukrainian painting, we invite you to our course of lectures.
By decision of UNESCO, 2009 was declared the year of Prymachenko, and a small planet-asteroid was named in her honor.
Already in the 1930s, her drawings had impressed Pablo Picasso and Louis Aragon. The vast majority of mentions of the beautiful artist began and ended with this formulation: «But, this is extremely unfair! Maria Prymachenko is a self-sufficient artist». There is a lot to tell about her and a lot to see in her works, besides the name of Picasso attributed next to it.
The artist is a representative of the so-called «naive art», her «animal series» is a unique phenomenon in the world art, and fantastic animals are the creation of her brilliant imagination. You wonder where a little girl from a small village had such an imagination. Where she took those images that she splashed on paper, drawing gouache on top of a careful pencil drawing.
However, the whole family of Maria Prymachenko was creative. Her grandmother was engaged in Pysankarstvo all her life, her father was a carpenter and woodcarver, her mother was an embroiderer. As a child, Maria contracted poliomyelitis, which left an imprint on her health forever. But the girl did not give up, she found joy in the colors of the flowers that surrounded her near the house. The basis of the artist’s work is folklore, legends and fairy tales, which she has heard since childhood.
«The Beast Walks» is a fantastic colorful painting depicting a fabulous ocher lion on a bright yellow background. The beast is decorated with flowers, and a single clover flower blooms at its feet. Here, as in most of the artist’s paintings, color is the basis of the composition.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the cultural and artistic phenomenon «Boychukism» arose, named after the founder of the art movement – Mykhailo Boychuk. «Boychukists» worked in monumental painting and decorative and applied arts. In 1909, Mykhailo Boychuk founded a workshop of neo-Byzantine art in Paris, which became the beginning of his school. He combined Ukrainian folk art and the church art of Byzantium.
Mykhailo Boychuk himself, together with his students, became a representative of the Shot Renaissance.
But everything started much more optimistically. Mykhailo studied painting in Lviv, where he met the Greek Catholic Archbishop of Lviv and Metropolitan of Halych Andrey Sheptytsky, with whose help he went to study at the Vienna Academy of Arts, then in Krakow, Munich, and finally settled in Paris for several years. Here he creates his own artistic cell. Boychuk deeply studies European art and Ukrainian folk art, also he was seriously interested in Byzantine history and art.
After returning to Lviv and the First World War, Mykhailo Boychuk was sent into exile. And in 1917, he took part in the creation of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts. In Kyiv, he is engaged in the restoration of works from the collection of Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko. In 1919, he proposed a method of fixing frescoes in St. Sophia Cathedral.
But the country’s leadership did not like creative searches and political views. In 1926-1927, Boychuk traveled to Germany, France, and Italy, and upon his return, he was accused of espionage and arrested. In 1936, Boychuk was shot together with his students. But the tragedy does not end there. Boychuk’s frescoes are urgently plastered over, mosaics knocked down, easel paintings destroyed.
In the work «Ukrainian girl» Boychuk depicts a woman in a Byzantine manner, with simplified facial features. Her eyes, nose and eyebrows create the architecture of the face. The color of the face also resembles an iconographic manner. They seem to be carved from stone. A white shirt and a red scarf intersect with red embroidered fragments on the sleeves. The ocher background emphasizes the color of the female figure.
One of the founders of the Transcarpathian school of fine arts worked extensively in leading European capitals, his name was included in art encyclopedias, and his works were bought by European museums. The artist bowed to the work of Cézanne, and considered himself his follower, professing the thesis «Art and love».
Erdely graduated from the Hungarian Royal Art Institute, worked in Munich, later in France, where he found his style and ideas for creative realization. After returning to Uzhhorod, Erdeli continued painting. He was a recognized portraitist, in addition, he paints landscapes, still lifes in the spirit of expressionism. The master was surrounded by success until the arrival of Soviet government. With the arrival of which he was accused of formalism and cosmopolitanism (the same accusations were made against Boychuk).
Landscape with a river is a traditional Carpathian plot for Erdely. The landscape is filled with light and bright colors. The artist knew how to convey the mood of the mountains with color. The mountains are reflected in the calm flow of the river. The mountain slopes are still dark green, but the trees in the foreground are already golden, indicating early autumn. The motif of the river flowing among the mountains was one of the favorite in the artist’s work.
The artist, who was called the «Amazon of the avant-garde», lived in the very heart of Kyiv. Alexandra Ekster was a bright representative of European Cubism and Futurism. In search of a new artistic philosophy, the artist went to Paris, where she found it in the studio of Pablo Picasso. Ekster used Ukrainian folk motifs in her colorful artistic compositions.
All her life she was fascinated by Ukrainian folk painting, traditional ceramics and embroidery. She worked with folk craftsmen, studied their color and symbolism. And she brought bright colors to Picasso’s workshop.
The artist began her creative career at the Kyiv Art School in Mykola Pymonenko’s workshop together with Oleksandr Bohomazov and Oleksandr Arkhypenko. Ekster attended the lessons of Serhiy Svitoslavsky.
Oleksandra Ekster brought European Cubo-Futurism to Kyiv. She is inspired by scenography and creates amazing scenery. It was she who transformed flat decorations into complex three-dimensional, multi-tiered structures.
Being already a well-known artist not only in Kyiv, but also in Europe, Ekster founded her school. Her workshop in the center of Kyiv, opposite the Opera House, was being transformed into an art center. After the arrival of the Bolsheviks, Ekster’s activities became impossible and she left the city. Wandering for some time, the artist stopped in Paris, where she continued teaching at the Academy of Modern Art until the end of her life in 1949.
Her «Florence» is a bright work with well-calibrated color accents. The variety of colors fit to the picture very well; it seems to convey the feeling of excessive saturation with beauty in Florence. The picture inspires, makes you want to examine it in detail and recognize the cityscapes transformed into the avant-garde of the main city of the Italian Renaissance. The first exhibition of the outstanding artist in Kyiv took place in 2008.
Mykola Pymonenko was born in the family of an icon painter. From an early age he saw painting and learned the basics of this art. Subsequently, he studied with Mykola Murashko, entered the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts.
The artist was a member of the Paris International Union of Arts and the Munich Union of Artists. The painting «Hopak» was successfully exhibited at the Paris Salon, and later it was acquired by the Louvre for its collection. The Ukrainian woman dancing on the canvas symbolized the indomitable spirit of Ukraine.
Ilya Repin (Ukrainian artist from the Cossack family) called Pymonenko the «Living Painter of Ukraine», and researchers of his work claim that he was best at conveying two things on canvas: water and moonlight.
Daily observations of people’s lives, working outdoors and improving the technique make the artist’s works full of light and air. He successfully exhibited in Berlin, Paris, London and Munich. However, the artist was not only interested in easel painting, he also took part in the fresco paintings of the St Volodymyr’s Cathedral in Kyiv.
In addition to painting, Pymonenko was engaged in graphics. He made beautiful illustrations for Kobzar Shevchenko.
The works of this Transcarpathian artist were exhibited at an exhibition in Prague as early as the 1930s, and most of his life he worked as a teacher and lecturer in Uzhhorod. His creative heritage belongs to the field of decorative and monumental painting, and he chose the creative processing of folk art as his credo.
Fedir Manaylo devoted his life to painting and teaching. His amazing industrial paintings depicting the internal architecture of factories still amaze the imagination even today.
He is the successor of the tradition of the Transcarpathian art school after Erdely and Bokshai. It is not so easy to find his museum in Uzhhorod. This is the apartment in which he lived and painted, the atmosphere of the studio apartment has been preserved as much as possible. An incredible number of paintings just stand next to the wall, because there are not enough walls to place everything. Such an attitude towards the legacy of an outstanding artist becomes sad.
His «Town» is a vivid picture of a winter cityscape. There is a white snow and bright roofs of typical Transcarpathian houses. All this against the background of the mighty Carpathians, which are covered with snow and with their greatness make a small town in the foothills even smaller, like a toy.
He was a student of Repin (Ukrainian born artist from the Cossack family), traveled a lot in European capitals, studying artistic skills, and spent a lot of time in his native Kyiv, about which he said: “Here is the sun, here is wonderful nature, here is our own culture…”. The talent of the artist raised Ukrainian art to the Western European level.
In 1901, the artist went on an artistic journey, which was part of the artistic education of that time. He visited Italy, France and Germany. He lived and worked in France for a long time, studying both contemporary French art and the paintings of old masters in the Louvre. He was especially fascinated by the paintings of Velázquez.
In Paris, Murashko creates the canvas «Portrait of a Girl in a Red Hat» – one of the best Ukrainian portraits of the 20th century. The picture is painted with broad strokes that sculpt the shape, create an image that is complemented by an amazing contrasting color. The pure red tones of the hat and the girl’s blush are balanced by the deep black tones of her clothing.
Oleksandr Murashko was one of the founding fathers of the Ukrainian Academy of Fine Arts, together with Heorhiy Narbut, Fedir Krychevsky, and Mykhailo Boychuk. It happened in 1917, and two years later Murashko was killed by a Cheka agent with a shot in the back of the head… He was only 44 years old… He still did not have time to do so much. But the artist of free spirit and thought, who was engaged in the study of Ukrainian culture and created Ukrainian painting and the Ukrainian artistic future, greatly hindered the newly established government.
Kotska studied with Adalbert Erdelyi and at the Roman Academy of Arts. After returning, he taught in a village school and continued painting. He took an active part in the protection of the collection of the Uzhhorod Museum in 1942-1944.
His works are distinguished by impeccable coloring, and a series of portraits of women in the national dress are like a kind of his business card. One of the master’s favorite themes is his native Transcarpathia.
His portraits of women of western Ukraine brought him fame. He always writes from nature, loves communication with his models. Kotska explores the color of the national dress of the Verkhovyna people – Hutsuls, Boyks and Lemks. In addition, Kotska works a lot as a landscape painter.
All of the Kotska’s creativity is related to Transcarpathia, the mountains and the people who lived there. All his life, he conveyed the local flavor, the culture of this people on his canvases.
The Galician icon painter of the 17th-18th centuries lived and worked in Zhovkva and was the author of the «The Zhovkva iconostasis» – the highest stage of the development of Ukrainian classical icon painting. While preserving the Ukrainian-Byzantine traditions, he managed to use new, Western European elements in his work.
«The Appearance of Christ to Mary Magdalene» is one of the first icons of the outstanding master. Subsequently, he creates iconostases that will determine the type of Western Ukrainian iconostasis of the end of the 17th – the first half of the 18th century with gospel scenes.
Rutkovych’s painting established in the Zhovkva center of Ukrainian painting as an independent and important artistic center of its time.
Kazimir Malevich was born in Kyiv, worked for many years in Russia and later returned and taught at the Ukrainian Academy of Fine Arts. Malevich was one of the brightest representatives of the avant-garde. He developed his own style of painting – Suprematism, based on objectlessness, geometric shapes and color. The theoretical basis for the formation of Suprematism was Cubism and Futurism. Malevich believed that he had reached a final break with the depiction of the real world in Suprematism.
In the history of his creative activity, Malevich went through several stages, and despite the variety of his works, the most famous work was «Black Square». The picture is considered a kind of icon of the avant-garde, and the artist himself claimed that it is a symbol of the completion of art, its peak and end.
An important role in the cult status of «Black Square» was played by its first exhibition, at which the author hung the picture in the corner of the room where the icon usually hung. Thus, Malevich literally implemented the basis of his Manifesto of Suprematism and broke with the traditions of painting and the representation of the objective world.
You can learn more about Ukrainian artists and their paintings at the lectures in the «Lihtaryk» art studio.
Make a creative gift – buy a gift certificate for our master classes and workshops. Or you can book online master classes and lectures to your office or home at a suitable time convenient for you.
We also invite you to visit our creative master classes in the studio, after which you will have one more favorite place where to go in Kyiv.
У меня синдром Стендаля сегодня. Утром ходили в Падуанский баптистерий. Смотрели фрески Менабуя. А после обеда у нас было посещение каппелы Скровеньи. Теперь я понимаю , что сделал Джотто для мира. Очень меня все это впечатлило в живую. Привет передала.
Мир прекрасен. Падуя очень понравилась:) спасибо за лекции Света!
Lily Golovchak
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