Levchenko, Petro

Levchenko, Petro [Левченко, Петро; Levčenko], b 11 July 1856 in Kharkiv, d 27 January 1917 in Kharkiv. (Photo: Petro Levchenko.) Painter and pedagogue. He studied art in Kharkiv under Dmytro Bezperchy, at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts (1878–83), and in Paris and Rome. From 1886 he lectured at the Kharkiv Painting School. He was a member of the Society of South Russian Artists and a participant in almost all of the exhibitions of the Peredvizhniki (1886–1904), and from 1900 his works displayed the influence of the impressionists. Levchenko did some 800 landscapes, primarily of Ukraine (such as A Deserted Place, Night: A Cottage in Moryntsi, A Ukrainian Village, In the Kharkiv Region, A Street in Putyvl, and The Yard of Saint Sophia Cathedral), but also painted abroad (such as A Street in Paris and Seacoast: Naples), as well as still lives and genre paintings.

A posthumous retrospective exhibition of 700 of his paintings was held in Kharkiv in 1918. Monographs about him were written by M. Pavlenko (1927), Yu. Diuzhenko (1958), and M. Bezkhutry (1984).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]