For the moment, I have reached the end of my list of Ukrainian painters whose work is out of copyright, and for whom I can get sufficient information and usable images of their art. I conclude with Mykola Ivasyuk (1865–1937), whose story is so poignant.
Ivasyuk was born in the town of Zastavna in the west of Ukraine, well to the south-east of Lviv. As this shortly became part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, when his artistic talent was recognised by a local painter, he went to train at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. After his studies there, he transferred to the academy in Munich, where he met Ilia Repin.
When he had completed his training he returned to Chernivtsi, the city closest to his home town, where he set up an art school before moving to Kyiv in 1908.
When he was still a student, Ivasyuk decided that he wanted to make history paintings. This of Bohun at the Crossing from 1900 shows the Zaporozhian Cossack leader Ivan Bohun (died 1664) with his forces fighting the Polish Army led by King John II Casimir, in the Battle of Berestechko of June 1651. One of the largest European land battles of the seventeenth century, the Cossacks suffered defeat and were routed, but their revolt continued for several more years. Bohun’s death is still commemorated annually in Ukraine.
He also painted some portraits and this idyllic painting of a young Mother (1908) feeding her infant under the huge sunflowers for which Ukraine is famous.
Shortly before the First World War, Ivasyuk was funded to return to Chernivtsi to run an art school there. In addition to that, he set up an icon painting workshop. During this time, he painted his most famous work, showing Cossack history from the middle of the seventeenth century.
In the Spring of 1648, with the seventh major uprising of Cossacks that century, their Great Revolt under the leadership of Bohdan Khmelnytsky resulted in the formation of a Cossack state, viewed by some as the foundation of Ukraine. Ivasyuk’s huge painting of the Entry of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi to Kyiv in 1649 shows the victorious Cossack hetman (leader), riding his white horse to be greeted by the metropolitan of Kyiv and patriarch of Jerusalem. The Cossacks had gone from the margins of society to its centre. This is a survivor of a series of major history paintings Ivasyuk completed during the years before the First World War.
Following the October 1917 Revolution, he was commissioned to design postage stamps for the new Ukrainian People’s Republic.
Riders on the Steppe from 1924 is one of his late Cossack paintings.
In 1926, Ivasyuk was appointed professor at the Kyiv Art Institute. However, he started to fall out of favour and was transferred to Odesa, where the criticism became even more serious. In the autumn of 1937, he was arrested, imprisoned, convicted of being a terrorist on the basis of his art, and was shot by a firing squad in Kyiv on 25 November 1937. He was seventy-two. Much of his art was confiscated or destroyed, and it wasn’t until 1980 that he was rehabilitated and his surviving paintings could be seen again.
Next week in this series I will start attempting to draw together the 33 artists that I have featured here into a coherent account of painting in Ukraine.
References
Andrey Kurkov and others (2022) Treasures of Ukraine, A Nation’s Cultural Heritage, Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978 0 500 02603 8.
The Eclectic Light Company 