The ukrainian impressionist painters

An important movement in painting that arose in France in the late 1860s and is linked with artists such as Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, August Renoir, and Alfred Sisley, impressionism had a strong influence on Ukrainian painting. The first Ukrainian impressionists appeared at the end of the 19th century and were graduates of the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts. Impressionism remained a major trend in Ukrainian painting until the early 1930s and it gave rise to Neo-impressionism, which attempted to base painting on scientific theory; Postimpressionism, which cultivated the esthetics of color; and Pointillism, which broke down colors into their elementary hues and distributed them in mosaic-like patterns.

In the fine arts, besides Alexander Archipenko, who left Ukraine in 1906, the following artists in Ukraine were closely associated with futurism of the constructivist rather than the anarchist bent: A. Ekster, Oleksander Bohomazov, Anatol Petrytsky, M. Semenko's brother Vasyl, Vasyl Yermilov, Kazimir Malevich, Ye. Prybylska, Yevhen Sahaidachny, Osyp Sorokhtei, Pavlo Kovzhun, and the members of the Nova Generatsiia circle. Still, before all the literary and artistic organizations were disbanded in Ukraine in 1932, futurism was officially denounced as bourgeois and was banned.

Krychevsky, Vasyl H., b 12 January 1873 in Vorozhba, Lebedyn county, Kharkiv gubernia, d 15 November 1952 in Caracas, Venezuela. Outstanding art scholar, architect, painter, graphic artist, set designer, and a master of applied and decorative art; brother of Fedir Krychevsky. He received little formal education. Interested deeply in Ukrainian folklore and art history, he audited Mykola Sumtsov's, Dmytro Bahalii's, and Egor Redin's classes at Kharkiv University. Working as an independent architect and artist, he achieved a national reputation by the time of the outbreak of the First World War. During the revolutionary period he was a founder and the first president of the Ukrainian State Academy of Arts. In the 1920s he taught at the Kyiv Institute of Plastic Arts and the Kyiv Architectural Institute. In 1927 he taught for a year at the Odesa Art School, and then served in the architectural department of the Kyiv State Art Institute until 1941. Moving to Lviv in 1943, he was appointed rector of a new Ukrainian art school, the Higher Art Studio. After the war he lived briefly in Paris before immigrating in 1947 to South America.

Krychevsky first achieved public recognition in 1903 by winning the architectural competition to build the Poltava Zemstvo Building (now the Poltava Regional Studies Museum). His design of the building inaugurated a new style based on the traditions of Ukrainian folk architecture, and set a new trend among young architects in Ukraine. He continued to work in this style, using it for a number of public and private buildings and monuments such as the People's Home in Lokhvytsia (1904); the residences of D. Myloradovych (1905), I. Shchitkivsky (1907), and Mykhailo Hrushevsky (1908–9); the Shevchenko Memorial Museum in Kaniv (1931–4); and monuments to M. Myloradovych (1908), Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky (1928), Danylo Zabolotny (1932), and Hrushevsky (1935). This distinctive Ukrainian style marked his interior designs for private homes and exhibition halls.

As a painter Krychevsky was deeply influenced by French impressionism. The pure and harmonious colors of his south-Ukrainian landscapes (such as A Crimean Landscape [1921], A Tatar House in Alushta [1923], and Alushta [1923]) or Kyiv cityscapes (such as View of Kyiv from the Holosiv District [1928], Podil [1934], and The Irynynska Street in Kyiv [1942]) (done in oils and watercolors) convey a lyrical atmosphere. His paintings were first exhibited in Kharkiv in 1897. He participated in the annual exhibitions of the Society of Russian Watercolorists in Saint Petersburg (1899–1902) and, later, in the exhibitions of the Kyiv painters (1910–13). Altogether he did about 300 paintings. Krychevsky is one of the main founders of modern Ukrainian book design. In his work he used traditional folk ornamentation and motifs in old Ukrainian books, and revived the old techniques of wood engraving, etching, and lithography. He designed over 80 bookcovers, some bookplates, and a number of entire books, including the deluxe edition of Ukraïns’ka pisnia (Ukrainian Song, 1935). At Mykhailo Hrushevsky's request he designed the state emblems and seals of the Ukrainian National Republic and a number of bank notes. From 1907 through to 1910, Krychevsky designed sets and costumes for some 15 plays and operas produced by the Sadovsky’s Theater in Kyiv, including Mykhailo Starytsky's Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi, Ivan Karpenko-Kary's Sava Chalyi, B. Smetana's The Bartered Bride, and S. Moniuszko's Halka. Then in 1917–18 he worked with the Ukrainian National Theater. Noted for their realism and attention to detail, his sets occasionally assumed an abstract or grotesque character to match the atmosphere of the drama. In the Soviet period he served as a consultant or artistic director for 12 films shot in Ukraine, including Taras Shevchenko (1926), Taras Triasylo (1927), Zvenyhora (1928), and Sorochyns’kyi iarmarok (The Sorochyntsi Fair, 1939), the first Ukrainian color film.

Krychevsky was an enthusiastic collector and student of Ukrainian folk art. Agreeing fully with J. Ruskin's and W. Morris's views on the relation of art to everyday life, he played an important role in promoting handicrafts among the people. He served as instructor in Bohdan Khanenko's kilim-weaving and cloth-printing workshop in Olenivka (1912–15) and as director of a ceramics school in Myrhorod (1918–19). He created his own designs for kilims (see Kilim weaving), printed fabrics, embroideries, ceramic products, and furniture. Over 1,100 samples of his work were displayed at a retrospective exhibition in Kyiv in 1940.

Krychevsky's articles on art and reviews appeared in the leading journals in Ukraine. His more important contributions to art criticism and history are ‘Pro rozuminnia ukraïns’koho styliu’ (On Understanding the Ukrainian Style, Siaivo, no. 3 [1914]), ‘Budynok, de zhyv T.H. Shevchenko u Kyïvi’ (The Building Where T. Shevchenko Lived in Kyiv, Ukraïna (1914–30), 1925, nos 1–2), and ‘Arkhitektura doby’ (The Architecture of the Age, Chervonyi shliakh, 1928, no. 3).

Murashko, Oleksander , b 7 September 1875 in Kyiv, d 14 June 1919 in Kyiv. Painter. He studied at the Kyiv Drawing School (1891–4), under Ilia Repin at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts (1894–1900), and in Munich and Paris (1902–4). He belonged to the New Society of Artists in Saint Petersburg and participated in its annual exhibitions (1904–14). In 1907 he settled in Kyiv, where he taught painting at the Kyiv Art School (1909–12) and at his own studio (1912–17). In 1909 he exhibited his canvases in Paris, Munich, and Amsterdam, and in 1910 at the international exhibition in Venice and at one-man shows in Berlin, Köln, and Düsseldorf. From 1911 he exhibited with the Munich Sezession group. In 1916 he joined the Peredvizhniki society and became a founding member of the Kyiv Society of Artists. He was a cofounder of the Ukrainian State Academy of Arts in 1917 and served there as a professor and rector. Murashko's style evolved from the realism of the Peredvizhniki school into a vivid, colorful impressionism. His paintings and portraits possess psychological depth. They include Burial of a Kish Otaman (1900), Girl with a Red Hat (1902–3), portraits of Hryhorii Tsyss (late 1890s), Mykola I. Murashko 1904), and Jan Stanisławski)(1906), Day at Rest (1911), By the Pond (1913), Peasant Family (1914), Washerwoman (1914), Flower Sellers (1917), and Woman with Nasturtiums (1918). Murashko established an international reputation and had a strong influence on the development of Ukrainian portraiture in the 20th century. He was murdered in Kyiv by unknown assailants.

Burachek, Mykola, b 16 March 1871 in Letychiv, Podilia gubernia, d 12 August 1942 in Kharkiv. Impressionist painter and pedagogue. Burachek studied in Kyiv and graduated from the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts in 1910 (class of Jan Stanisławski). His first exhibit was held in 1907. In 1910–12 he worked in the studio of Henri Matisse in Paris. In 1917–22 he served as professor at the Ukrainian State Academy of Arts in Kyiv and then at the Kyiv State Art Institute and the Lysenko Music and Drama School in Kyiv. From 1925 to 1934 he was rector of the Kharkiv Art Institute and then returned to the Kyiv State Art Institute. Burachek also designed stage sets: in 1934 for the plays Marusia Churai by Ivan Mykytenko and Dai sertsiu voliu ... (Set Your Heart Free ...) by Marko Kropyvnytsky, which were staged in Kharkiv theaters, and in 1937 for plays staged in Donetsk theaters. A master landscape painter, he rendered Ukrainian landscapes in a colorful, impressionist style in such works as Morning on the Dnieper (1934), Apple Trees in Bloom (1936), and The Mighty Dnieper Roars and Bellows (1941). Burachek wrote Moie zhyttia (My Life, 1937), Velykyi narodnyi khudozhnyk (A Great National Artist, 1939, a monograph on Taras Shevchenko), and numerous articles about Oleksander Murashko, Serhii Vasylkivsky, Mykhailo Zhuk, Mykola Samokysh, and other artists. A book about Burachek by Yu. Diuzhenko was published in Kyiv in 1967.

Hlushchenko, Mykola, b 17 September 1901 in Novomoskovske, Katerynoslav gubernia, d 31 October 1977 in Kyiv. Artist. A graduate of the Academy of Art in Berlin (1924), from 1925 he worked in Paris where he immediately attracted the attention of French critics. From the Neue Sachlichkeit style of his Berlin period he changed to postimpressionism. Besides numerous French, Italian, Dutch, and (later) Ukrainian landscapes, he also painted flowers, still life, nudes, and portraits (of Oleksander Dovzhenko and Volodymyr Vynnychenko, as well as portraits commissioned by the Soviet government of the French writers Henri Barbusse, Romen Rolland, and Victor Margueritte and the painter Paul Signac). At the beginning of the 1930s, Hlushchenko belonged to the Association of Independent Ukrainian Artists and helped organize its large exhibition of Ukrainian, French, and Italian paintings at the National Museum in Lviv. In 1936 he moved to the USSR, but was allowed to live in Ukraine only after the war when his works began to reflect official approved socialist realism. In the 1960s, having come into close contact with new artistic trends on his trips abroad, he revitalized his paintings with expressive colors, and assumed a leading position among Ukrainian colorists. Hlushchenko's work was exhibited in Berlin (1924), Paris (five exhibits 1925–34), Milan (1927), Budapest (1930, 1932), Stockholm (1931), Rome (1933), Lviv (1934, 1935), Moscow (1943, 1959), Belgrade (1966, 1968), London (1966), Toronto (1967–9), and Kyiv (over 10 exhibits).

Archipenko, Alexander, b 30 May 1887 in Kyiv, d 25 February 1964 in New York. Modernist sculptor, painter, pedagogue, and a full member of the International Institute of Arts and Literature from 1953. Archipenko studied art at the Kyiv Art School in 1902–5, in Moscow in 1906–8, and then briefly at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His first one-man show took place in 1906 in Ukraine. He moved to Paris in 1909. In 1910 he exhibited his works with a group of Cubists at the Salon des Artistes Indépendants and then exhibited his works there annually until 1914 In 1911 his works appeared also at the Salon d'Automne. In 1912 Archipenko joined a new artistic group—La Section d'Or, which numbered among its members P. Picasso, G. Braque, J. Gris, F. Léger, R. Delaunay, R. de la Fresnaye, J. Villon, F. Picabia, and M. Duchamp—and participated in the group's exhibitions.

In 1912 Archipenko opened his own school of sculpture in Paris. At his individual exhibition at the Folkwang Museum in Hagen, Germany, in 1912, Archipenko displayed Médrano I, the first modern sculpture made of various polychromed materials (wood, glass, and metal fiber). It was followed by Médrano II (1913–14). At this time he also created the first so-called sculpto-peintures (carved and painted plaster reliefs, such as Woman before a Mirror [1916]) and the first modern sculpture composed of concave forms contrasted with convex ones and incorporating elements of color and the void—Walking Woman. In 1913 Archipenko’s works appeared at the Armory Show in New York, and he held his first individual exhibition at Galerie der Sturm in Berlin. In the following year he participated in a cubist exhibition in Prague and a futurist exhibition in Rome, and exhibited such works as Carrousel Pierrot and Boxing at Salon des Artistes Indépendants. During the First World War he lived in Cimiez near Nice, where, in 1917, he developed a cubist play, La Vie Humaine; he returned to Paris in 1918. From 1919 to 1921 Archipenko's works were exhibited in many cities throughout Europe. In 1920 he was given a separate pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and in 1920 and 1921 his work appeared at the exhibitions of La Section d'Or in Paris, Brussels, Geneva, Rome, and several cities in the Netherlands (photo: Archipenko's Woman [1920]). In 1921 Archipenko moved to Berlin, where he established a school of sculpture. He held a retrospective exhibition at Potsdam and his first individual exhibition in the United States, at the Société Anonyme in New York.

In 1923 Archipenko moved to the United States. He established a school in New York, and in the following year, he moved it to Woodstock, New Jersey. In 1927 he created and received a patent for changeable pictures (peinture changeante) known as Archipentura and Apparatus for Displaying Changeable Pictures. (Archipentura was lost in 1935.) Besides working at his art, Archipenko devoted much time to teaching. He was in constant contact with various universities, among them those in Oakland, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Chicago (the New Bauhaus School). In 1927 an exhibition of his works was arranged in Tokyo. In 1929 he established a school of ceramics, Arko, in New York. In 1933 his work appeared in the Ukrainian Pavilion at the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago. The Nazi regime confiscated 22 of Archipenko's sculptures in German museums in the 1930s. In 1937 he moved to Chicago, where he opened his Modern School of Fine Arts and Practical Design. In 1947 Archipenko created the first sculptures out of transparent materials (plastics) with interior illumination (modeling light)—l'art de la réflexion. In 1948 he exhibited his new plexiglass works at the Associated American Artists Galleries in New York. In 1952 and 1953 his work was exhibited in São Paulo, Brazil, and in Guatemala. In 1955 and 1956 his exhibitions toured Germany. In 1956 Archipenko tried his hand at moving figures (figures tournantes), which were mechanically rotating structures built of wood, mother of pearl, and metal. In 1959 he received the gold medal at Biennale d'Arte Trivenata at Padua, Italy. In 1960 his largest monograph, Fifty Creative Years, 1908–1958, appeared. Parts of it had been published previously in Ukrainian art journals. In 1962 Archipenko was elected to the Department of Art of the National Institute of Arts and Letters in the United States. His last works were two large bronzes, Queen of Sheba (1961) and King Solomon (1964), and 10 lithographs entitled Les formes vivantes. In 1963 and 1964 large retrospective exhibitions of Archipenko's sculptures, drawings, and prints were held in Rome, Milan, and Munich. From 1967 to 1969 posthumous retrospective exhibitions of his work were organized by the University of California (Los Angeles) at 10 American museums and by the Smithsonian Institution at various European museums, including the Rodin Museum in Paris. In 1974 a large retrospective exhibition “Alexander Archipenko – A Pioneer of Modern Sculpture” took place in Tokyo, and was followed by numerous exhibitions in the United States and Europe.

As a cubist, Archipenko utilized interdependent geometrical lines and introduced new concepts and methods into sculpture. Juan Gris wrote about Archipenko’s influence on the art of the early 20th century: “Archipenko challenged the traditional understanding of sculpture. It was generally monochromatic at the time. His pieces were painted in bright colors. Instead of accepted materials such as marble, bronze or plaster, he used mundane materials such as wood, glass, metal, and wire. His creative process did not involve carving or modeling in the accepted tradition but nailing, pasting and tying together, with no attempt to hide nails, junctures or seams. His process parallels the visual experience of cubist painting.” Although cubism formed the basis of Archipenko’s art, it was not the only style he worked in. He himself referred to it in the following way: “As form my art, the geometric character of three-dimensional sculptures is due to the extreme simplification of form and not to Cubist dogma. I did not take from Cubism, but added to it.”

Archipenko's purpose was to discover the laws of formal relationships through a precise examination of the great historical styles and to preserve the old foundations of the plastic arts while transforming them in his own way. His creative and logical thought was also opposed to his dynamic personality, and this dramatic conflict endowed his art with an intriguing vitality.

Archipenko never severed his ties with his countrymen. During his first years in Paris he was a member of the Ukrainian Students' Club; in Berlin, a member of the Ukrainian Hromada; and in the United States, a member of the Ukrainian Artists' Association in the USA. His works appeared at the association's exhibitions. He belonged to the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Ukrainian Institute of America. Many of his works have Ukrainian themes, eg, the relief Ukraine (1940), four busts of Taras Shevchenko (one of them in the Park of Nationalities in Cleveland), busts of Ivan Franko and Prince Volodymyr the Great, and portraits of Ukrainian public figures. Some of Archipenko's exhibitions, such as the one at the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago, were sponsored by Ukrainian groups.

In Soviet Ukraine Archipenko's name was never mentioned before his death. Five of his sculptures and paintings at the of Lviv Museum of Ukrainian Art were destroyed in the 1950s. Although his name began appearing in the artistic press during the post-Stalin Thaw, Vitalii Korotych's monograph about him was suppressed. With the lessening of censorship and Party control during the perestroika period in the late 1980s, Archipenko quickly acquired recognition as one of Ukraine’s most prominent twentieth-century artists. The first Soviet book devoted to his works appeared in Kyiv in in 1989. The first exhibition of his works in post-Soviet Ukraine, entitled “Preserved in Ukraine,” took place in Kyiv in 2001.

Impressionism. An important movement in painting that arose in France in the late 1860s and is linked with artists such as Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley, who sought to capture with short strokes of unmixed pigment the play of sunlight on objects. The name of the movement was derived from Monet's Impressions: Sunrise (1872). Impressionism had a strong influence on Ukrainian painting. The first Ukrainian impressionists appeared at the end of the 19th century and were graduates of the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts, where they had studied under Jan Stanisławski, Leon Wyczółkowski, and J. Fałat. Oleksa Novakivsky, who later embraced a symbolic expressionism reminiscent of Vincent van Gogh and Ferdinand Hodler, was one of the first Ukrainian impressionists. Ivan Trush, who preferred to work with grayed colors, adopted impressionism only partly. Mykola Burachek captured the sunbathed colors of the Ukrainian steppe. Mykhailo Zhuk and Ivan Severyn introduced decorative elements into their impressionist works. Impressionism was a major trend in Ukrainian painting until the early 1930s. Its leading exponents were Oleksander Murashko, Vasyl H. Krychevsky and Fedir Krychevsky, Petro Kholodny (landscapes and portraits), Mykola Hlushchenko, and Oleksii Shovkunenko. Then Mykhailo Dmytrenko, Mykola Nedilko, Mykola Krychevsky, and Mykhailo Moroz continued the tradition of Ukrainian impressionism.

Impressionism gave rise to Neo-impressionism, which attempted to base painting on scientific theory; Postimpressionism, which cultivated the esthetics of color; and Pointillism, which broke down colors into their elementary hues and distributed them in mosaic-like patterns. Severyn Borachok, Myroslav Radysh, and Vasyl Khmeliuk may be included among the Neo-impressionists and Postimpressionists. With the imposition of socialist realism in the 1930s, impressionism in Soviet Ukraine was condemned as decadent and proscribed, although its influence in the better Ukrainian painters is evident.

Impressionist sculptors such as Auguste Rodin avoided sharp outlines and excessive detail in order to convey a general impression of the object. The leading Ukrainian exponents of this trend were Mykhailo Parashchuk, Mykhailo Havrylko, Bernard Kratko, Serhii Lytvynenko, and Antin Pavlos.

Impressionism left its imprint also on music and literature. In music it strove to convey intimate and subtle moods. Vasyl Barvinsky was a typical representative of this trend in music. Impressionism in literature is a manner of writing whereby the author does not try to represent reality objectively but to capture the impressions derived from it. The writer frequently centers his attention on the mental life of a character by simply registering his impressions or sensations instead of interpreting experience. The representive impressionist writers in Ukrainian prose are Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, Vasyl Stefanyk, Hryhorii Kosynka, and Mykola Khvylovy (although he shows traces of expressionism), and in poetry Oleksander Oles. Impressionism was linked often with other literary trends such as Symbolism (Dmytro Zahul) and Neoromanticism (Volodymyr Sosiura).