XI. Mykhailo boichuk and his school of ukrainian monumental art
Art critics, including Guillaume Apollinaire, first took notice of Mykhailo Boichuk's art in 1910 in Paris, when he participated in exhibitions of the Salon d'Automne, and, together with his students, held an exhibition at the Salon des Independants on the theme of the revival of Byzantine art. Having witnessed the birth of modern art in Paris, Boichuk attempted to blend it with his native tradition, developing a style of simplified monumental forms inspired by traditional Byzantine and Ukrainian icon, the Italian Renaissance painting of the Quattrocento period, and the Ukrainian folk art. This style, having won high critical acclaim, became known as Boichukism. In the 1920s, its followers made up a dominant part of the membership of Association of Revolutionary Art of Ukraine, which developed a unique and powerful school of Ukrainian monumental art. However, Boichukism was often attacked by official Soviet critics for 'formalism,' 'bourgeois nationalism,' and focusing on the countryside. During the Salinist terror, Boichuk and his most prominent students and collaborators, Vasyl Sedliar, Ivan Padalka, Sofiia Nalepinska-Boichuk, and Mykola Kasperovych, were arrested by the NKVD and executed. Categorized as the 'bourgeois-nationalist art,' most of Boichuk's and his students' frescoes and paintings were destroyed by the Soviet authorities... Learn more about Mykhailo Boichuk and his school of Ukrainian monumental art by visiting the following entries:
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BOICHUK, MYKHAILO, b 30 October 1882 in Romanivka, Ternopil county, d 13 July 1937 in Kyiv. Influential Ukrainian modernist painter, graphic artist, and teacher. Boichuk studied at Yuliian Pankevych's art studio in Lviv (1898), a private art school in Vienna (1899), and the Cracow Academy of Arts (1899-1905). He continued his studies in Munich, Vienna, and Paris. In 1909 he founded his own studio-school in Paris, at which his future wife Sofiia Nalepinska, Mykola Kasperovych, and other painters studied. After the Revolution of 1917 Boichuk lived in Kyiv. There he became a founding professor of the Ukrainian State Academy of Arts, taught monumental art at the academy, and was briefly its rector. In 1925 he was one of the founders of the Association of Revolutionary Art of Ukraine. Boichuk formed a school of monumental painting, which continued to develop in Ukraine into the 1930s. Arrested by the NKVD in November 1936 on the charge of being an 'agent of the Vatican,' he was executed together with his students Ivan Padalka and Vasyl Sedliar... |
Mykhailo Boichuk |
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SEDLIAR, VASYL, b 12 April 1899 in Zhorzhivka, Poltava gubernia, d 13 July 1937 in Kyiv. Painter and graphic artist. Sedliar studied at the Kyiv Art School (1915-19) and then at the Ukrainian State Academy of Arts under Mykhailo Boichuk. He worked on large-scale murals, illustrated books, designed packaging, and produced ceramic works. Together with Oksana Pavlenko and other painters, he executed murals on the walls of auditoriums of the Kyiv Institute of Plastic Arts (1924) and at the Mezhyhiria Ceramics Tekhnikum (1924). Sedliar was the director of the Mezhyhiria Art and Ceramics Tekhnikum (1923-30). He was one of the founders of the Association of Revolutionary Art of Ukraine. As art critic, Sedliar opposed the official Soviet theory that argued the crucial influence of Russian realist painting on the development of Ukrainian art. He was arrested by the NKVD in November 1936, charged with terrorist activity and later executed together with Boichuk and Ivan Padalka. The majority of his works, including thousands of paintings, were destroyed... |
Vasyl Sedliar |
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PADALKA, IVAN, b 27 October 1894 in Zhornoklovy, Zolotonosha county, Poltava gubernia, d 13 July 1937 in Kyiv. Painter, muralist, and graphic artist. He studied at the Kyiv Art School (1913-17) and under Mykhailo Boichuk and Vasyl H. Krychevsky at the Ukrainian State Academy of Arts (1917-20). A member of the Association of Revolutionary Art of Ukraine in the 1920s, he taught at the Myrhorod (1920-1) and Mezhyhiria (1921-5) ceramics tekhnikums, the Kharkiv Art Institute (1925-34), and the Kyiv State Art Institute (1934-6). Under M. Boichuk's direction, in 1919, he took part in creating the 14 murals at the Lutsk regimental army barracks in Kyiv and, in 1933-5, the fresco 'Rest' at the Kharkiv Chervonozavodskyi Ukrainian Drama Theater. He also did woodcuts, portraits of Petro Panch and Oksana Pavlenko, and numerous genre paintings. His paintings and prints were influenced by the icon and lubok pictures traditions. One of the leading representatives of Boichukism, Padalka was arrested by the NKVD in September 1936 and later executed... |
Ivan Padalka |
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BOICHUK, TYMOFII, b 27 September 1896 in Romanivka, Ternopil county, d 1922 in Kyiv. Modernist painter and graphic designer. In 1914 he left his village to live with his much older and more famous brother, Mykhailo Boichuk, and to work with him and Mykola Kasperovych on the restoration of the iconostasis in the Church of the Holy Trinity in Lemeshi, Chernihiv region. After the February Revolution of 1917 the two brothers lived in Kyiv. There Tymofii studied at the Ukrainian State Academy of Arts and his brother's monumental-painting workshop (1917-22), and participated in the painting of frescoes in the Lutsk regimental army barracks in Kyiv (1919). Under his brother's supervision he created large-scale paintings in the Kyiv Theatre of Opera and Ballet for the First Congress of Regional Executive Committees (1919). His other paintings include Two Women Selling Seeds (1916), and, in 1919-20, Planting Potatoes, In the Pasture (now at the Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow), and In the Cobbler's Shop. Boichuk died of tuberculosis... |
Tymofii Boichuk |
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PAVLENKO, OKSANA, b 12 February 1895 in Valiava, Cherkasy county, Kyiv gubernia, d 21 April 1991 in Moscow. Painter. In 1914 she began her studies at the Kyiv Art School under Fotii Krasytsky and Fedir Krychevsky. In 1917 she enrolled in the Ukrainian State Academy of Arts and studied under Mykhailo Boichuk. She continued her studies in Boichuk's Workshop of Monumental Painting at the Kyiv Institute of Plastic Arts (1918-22). In 1919 she was part of Boichuk's team that decorated the Lutsk regimental army barracks in Kyiv (destroyed in 1922). She also took part in the experimental fresco painting on the walls of auditoriums of the Kyiv Institute of Plastic Arts (these frescos were destroyed in 1934). While teaching painting, drawing, and ceramics at the Mezhyhiria Tekhnikum (1923-9) she painted frescoes there. In 1929 she moved to Moscow where she taught in the ceramics faculty of the Moscow Higher State Artistic and Technical Institute (1929-31) and, later, in several other schools. Her memoirs about Mykhailo Boichuk were published in 1987... |
Oksana Pavlenko |
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SAHAIDACHNY, YEVHEN, b 22 June 1886 in Kherson, d 21 August 1961 in Kosiv, Ivano-Frankivsk oblast. Painter, scenery designer, and teacher. He was educated in Saint Petersburg where he belonged to several avant-garde art goups. In 1911 he traveled to Lviv to work with Mykhailo Boichuk who had a powerful influence on Sahaidachny's development as an artist. Upon his return to Russia in 1912, Sahaidachny exhibited his paintings with the group of leftists avant-garde painters and worked as a designer for Saint Petersburg theaters. He continued to work on stage design in Kyiv after moving to the city in 1917. In 1917 he became a member of the Ukrainian State Academy of Arts, and from 1922 he lectured at the Kyiv State Art Institute, the Mezhyhiria Ceramics Tekhnikum, and several other institutions. He was a member of the Association of Revolutionary Art of Ukraine. After the Second World War Sahaidachny moved to Chernivtsi and, in 1947, to Kosiv where he taught at the Kosiv School of Applied Art... |
Yevhen Sahaidachny |
The preparation, editing, and display of the IEU entries associated with Mykhailo Boichuk and his school of Ukrainian monumental art were made possible by the financial support of the CANADIAN FOUNDATION FOR UKRAINIAN STUDIES.