X. The ukrainian impressionist painters

IMPRESSIONISM. The original French impressionist painters sought to capture with short strokes of unmixed pigment the play of sunlight on objects. The name of the movement was derived from Claude Monet's Impressions: Sunrise (1872). Oleksa Novakivsky, who later embraced symbolic expressionism, 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, while Mykhailo Zhuk and Ivan Severyn introduced decorative elements into their impressionist works. Other leading exponents of Ukrainian impressionism were Oleksander Murashko, Vasyl Krychevsky, Petro Kholodny (landscapes and portraits), Mykola Hlushchenko, and Oleksii Shovkunenko...

Impressionism

OLEKSANDER MURASHKO, 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). In 1907 he settled in Kyiv, where he taught painting at the Kyiv Art School and at his own studio. 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, Koln, and Dusseldorf. 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...

Oleksander Murashko

KRYCHEVSKY, VASYL, 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. 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. After the war he lived briefly in Paris before immigrating in 1947 to South America. As a painter Krychevsky was deeply influenced by French impressionism. The pure and harmonious colors of his south-Ukrainian landscapes or Kyiv cityscapes (done in oils and watercolors) convey a lyrical atmosphere...

Vasyl Krychevsky

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. 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. A master landscape painter, he rendered Ukrainian landscapes in a colorful, impressionist style...

Mykola Burachek

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. 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...

Mykola Hlushchenko