FRESCO PAINTING. A method of painting on freshly plastered walls with powdered pigments that are resistant to the erosive action of lime. Before the colors are applied to the wet plaster the main lines of the composition are usually traced on the preceding coat. The painting is very durable and is applied to both interior and exterior walls. The origins of fresco painting in Ukraine can be traced back to the 4th century BC. Frescoes adorned the homes, public buildings, and tombs of the Greek colonists and Scythians on the coast of the Black Sea. The most interesting ancient frescoes from the 1st century BC were discovered during excavations of burial sites in Kerch in the tomb of Demeter...

Fresco painting

[FRESCOES OF] SAINT SOPHIA CATHEDRAL. Saint Sophia Cathedral is a masterpiece of the art and architecture of Ukraine and Europe. It was built in Kyiv at the height of Kyivan Rus', in the Byzantine style, and significantly transformed during the baroque period. The cathedral was founded by Grand Prince Yaroslav the Wise and built between 1037 and 1044. The original building, most of which remains at the core of the existing cathedral, is a cross-in-square plan with twelve cruciform piers marking five east–west naves intersected by five transverse aisles. The cathedral's interior is decorated with magnificient 11th-century mosaics and frescoes. Exterior ornamentation of the original 11th-century walls consists of decorative brickwork, the monochromatic painting of key architectural elements, and a number of frescoes...

Saint Sophia Cathedral

[FRESCOES OF] SAINT MICHAEL'S GOLDEN-DOMED MONASTERY. An Orthodox men's monastery in Kyiv. In the 1050s Prince Iziaslav Yaroslavych built Saint Demetrius's Monastery and Church in the old upper city of Kyiv, near Saint Sophia Cathedral. In 1108-13 his son, Sviatopolk II Iziaslavych, built a church at the monastery dedicated to Saint Michael the Archangel. The monastery was mostly destroyed during the Tatar invasion of 1240 and ceased to exist. Written records confirm that it was reopened by 1496. Soon afterward it began to be known as Saint Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery, its name being taken from the church built by Sviatopolk II Iziaslavych. Restored and enlarged over the 16th century, it became one of the most popular and wealthy monasteries in Ukraine. ...

Saint Michael's Monastery

[FRESCOES OF] SAINT CYRIL'S MONASTERY. A monastery founded by Grand Prince Vsevolod Olhovych ca 1140 on the outskirts of medieval Kyiv. Its church, Saint Cyril's, was built ca 1146. The church's frescoes are fine examples of 12th-century Ukrainian art and the influence of Bulgarian-Byzantine painting on it. They depict the Nativity of Christ, the Presentation of Christ at the Temple, the Eucharist, the Annunciation, the Dormition, the Last Judgment and Apocalypse, an angel gathering the heavens into a scroll, the apostles, the evangelists, and various prophets and martyrs. Murals of saints—Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius, Saint John the Macedonian, Saint Euphemios—adorn its pillars, and compositions depicting Saint Cyril teaching the heretic, teaching in the cathedral, and teaching the emperor are found in the southern apse...

Saint Cyril's Monastery

MOSAIC. A method of wall and floor decoration in which small pieces of cut stone, glass (tesserae), and, occasionally, ceramic or other imperishable materials are set into plaster, cement, or waterproof mastic. The earliest existing examples of mosaics in Ukraine are fragments from the floor of a domestic bath found at the site of the Greek colony of Chersonese Taurica (ca 3rd–2nd century BC). Made of various colored pebbles, the floor depicts two nude figures and decorative motifs. Mosaic was used to decorate various Rus' churches and palaces in the 10th to 12th centuries, including the Church of the Tithes (989–96), the Saint Sophia Cathedral (1037 to the late 1040s), the Dormition Cathedral of the Kyivan Cave Monastery (1078), and Saint Michael's Church (1108–13) of the Saint Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery...

Mosaic

[MOSAICS OF] SAINT SOPHIA CATHEDRAL. The centripetal plan of Saint Sophia Cathedral, internal volumes, and external massing reflect the hierarchical ordering of the mosaics and frescoes inside. As the surfaces of the walls advance from the floor and the narthex, the frescoes increase in size and religious significance and culminate in the monumental mosaics Mother of God (Orante) in the central apse and Christ Pantocrator in the central dome. Among the most masterful mosaics are those of the Church Fathers. The more archaic Orante in the central apse, often referred to as the Indestructible Wall, is the most famous....

Saint Sophia Cathedral

BYZANTINE ART. Visual art produced in the Byzantine Empire and in countries under its political control or cultural influence, among them Ukraine. The spread of Byzantine art was the result, in large measure, of its style, which had all the traits of universalism to which other cultures could easily adapt. This style began to develop in the 6th century AD during the first Golden Age under the reign of Emperor Justinian. It was based on Greco-Roman art and the art of the East—Syria, Asia Minor, Persia, and Egypt. In architecture, churches with stone cupolas symbolizing the cosmos appeared, replacing the longitudinal basilicas with flat wooden ceilings...

Byzantine art

[MOSAICS OF] SAINT MICHAEL'S GOLDEN-DOMED MONASTERY. The main church of the Saint Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery (built in either 1654–7 or 1108–13) is an important architectural and cultural monument. Originally it had three naves and three apses on the eastern side and was topped by a single large gilded cupola. It was rebuilt in a baroque style and expanded with a new facade and six additional cupolas in the 18th century. The most striking elements of the interior were the 12th–century frescoes and mosaics, probably done by Kyivan artisans (including perhaps Master Olimpii). Although many of these were destroyed in the 13th to 16th century, some—notably the mosaics of Saint Demetrius of Thessalonika, the Eucharist, and Archdeacon Stephen—survived and were partially restored in the late 19th century...

Saint Michael's Monastery

CLASSICISM. In art classicism refers to a certain style, connected with classical culture and works of art, whose simplicity and severity of form contrast with the decorativeness of the baroque. Classicism came to Ukraine from central and southern Europe in the mid-18th century. Its influence was felt first in Western Ukraine, where it manifested itself mainly in the architecture of palaces and villas. Later these kinds of buildings were built in central and eastern Ukraine by Italian, French, English, and German architects. In sculpture classicism was represented by Ivan P. Martos and M. Kozlovsky, who worked in Saint Petersburg and Moscow and were the leading artists and teachers at the end of the 18th century, and by Kostiantyn Klymchenko, who worked in Rome. The masters of decorative painting, which was very typical of the period and was widely used in the palaces in Ukraine, were Hryhorii Stetsenko, Yu. Kozakevych, I. Kosarevsky, and the painter-serf M. Dykov...

Classicism

LOSENKO, ANTIN, b 10 August 1737 in Hlukhiv, Nizhen regiment, d 4 December 1773 in Saint Petersburg. Painter; a leading exponent of historical painting in the classicist style. He was brought to Saint Petersburg to sing in the imperial court choir in 1744. After his voice changed, he was sent to study art under I. Argunov (1753–8) and at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts (1759–60), which gave him bursaries to study in Paris (1760–5) and Rome (1766–9). Losenko became a member of and professor at the academy in 1770, served as its director (1772–3), and wrote its textbook on human proportions (1772). His oeuvre includes paintings on biblical and mythological themes, portraits of prominent personalities, a self-portrait, and approx 200 drawings of nude figures and parts of the body, which were held up as models of excellence to students at the academy for many years...

Antin Losenko

LEVYTSKY, DMYTRO H., b 1735 in Kyiv, d 16 April 1822 in Saint Petersburg. The most prominent portraitist of the classicist era in the Russian Empire. He acquired his basic training from his father, Hryhorii Levytsky. In 1753–6 he helped his father and Aleksii Antropov decorate Saint Andrew's Church in Kyiv. From 1758 to 1761 he worked in Saint Petersburg. From 1762, while living in Moscow he was a portraitist in great demand among the Russian aristocracy. He moved to Saint Petersburg in 1769, and he won the highest award at the summer exhibition in 1770 held by the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts and was elected a member of the academy. Building on the baroque, classicism, and Western European traditions, Levytsky created a school of portrait painting. His portraits reveal his expert knowledge of drawing, composition, color, and the appropriate gesture...

Dmytro H. Levytsky

BOROVYKOVSKY, VOLODYMYR, b 4 August 1757 in Myrhorod in the Poltava region, d 18 April 1825 in Saint Petersburg. Iconographer and portrait painter, son of Luka Borovyk (d 1775) who was a Cossack fellow of the banner and an iconographer. Borovykovsky was trained in art by his father and uncle and then in 1788 went to study portrait painting under Dmytro H. Levytsky at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts. In 1793 he became an academician there. Until 1787 Borovykovsky lived and worked in Ukraine. During his career he painted many churches, icons, and iconostases, only some of which have been preserved. Borovykovsky's religious art departed from the established norms of Byzantine iconography in the Russian Empire and tended towards a realistic approach. He painted about 160 portraits, among them Ukrainian public figures. Adhering to the spirit of classicism, he promoted West European traditions through his art...

Volodymyr Borovykovsky

GENRE PAINTING. A style of painting characterized by the depiction of scenes from everyday life. Ukrainian genre painting usually depicts village life. Early examples of genre painting in Ukraine include certain works by Vasilii Shternberg, Ivan Soshenko, and Taras Shevchenko. In the late 19th century, the Ukrainian representatives of the Peredvizhniki society of painters, such as Kostiantyn Trutovsky, Ilia Repin, Mykola Bodarevsky, and Mykola Pymonenko were among the more prominent genre painters. Later works depicting everyday life were painted by, among others, Porfyrii Martynovych, Ivan Izhakevych, Fotii Krasytsky, Amvrosii Zhdakha, Fedir Krychevsky, Ivan Severyn, Oleksander Murashko, and Anatol Petrytsky, many of whom were associated with the Peredvizhniki, and by the Western Ukrainians Olena Kulchytska, Ivan Trush, Mykola Ivasiuk, Yosyp Bokshai, Osyp Kurylas, and V. Yarotsky...

Genre Painting

PEREDVIZHNIKI. A name applied to members of the Russian Society of Itinerant Art Exhibitions. It was founded in 1870 by Ivan Kramskoi, Nikolai Ge, and 13 other artists who had left the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts in protest against its rigid neoclassical dicta. In order to reach the widest audience possible, the society organized regular traveling exhibitions throughout the Russian Empire, including Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odesa in their tours. Over the years the society attracted artists from various parts of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. Among the Ukrainians who joined it were Kyriak Kostandi, Arkhyp Kuindzhi, Mykola Kuznetsov, Oleksander Murashko, Leonid Pozen, Mykola Pymonenko, Petro Nilus, Ilia Repin, Serhii Svitoslavsky, and Mykola Yaroshenko. The Peredvizhniki worked in realist and naturalist styles and concentrated on landscape art, portraiture, and genre painting...

Peredvizhniki

KOSTANDI, KYRIAK, b 3 October 1852 in Dofinivka, Odesa county, Kherson gubernia, d 31 October 1921 in Odesa. Realist painter and art scholar. After graduating from the Odesa Drawing School (1874) and the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts (1882), he returned to Odesa, where he painted and taught at the drawing school. In 1897 he joined the Peredvizhniki and began to take part in their exhibitions. Having helped found the Society of South Russian Artists, he served from 1902 to 1920 as its president. In 1907 he was elected full member of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts. From 1917 he served as director of the Odesa City Museum. Adhering to a strictly realist style, Kostandi devoted himself to genre painting, but did some landscape painting and portrait painting as well...

Kyriak Kostandi

PYMONENKO, MYKOLA, b 9 March 1862 in Priorka (a suburb of Kyiv), d 26 March 1912 in Kyiv. Prominent Ukrainian realist painter; full member of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts from 1904. After studying at the Kyiv Drawing School (1878–82) and the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts (1882–4) he taught at the Kyiv Drawing School (1884–1900) and Kyiv Art School (1900–6). He took part in the exhibitions of the Society of South Russian Artists (1891–6) and Peredvizhniki society (from 1893) and became a member of the latter society in 1899. In 1909 he was elected a member of the Paris International Association of Arts and Literatures. Pymonenko produced over 700 genre scenes, landscapes, and portraits, many of which were reproduced as postcards...

Mykola Pymonenko

VASYLKIVSKY, SERHII, b 19 October 1854 in Izium, Kharkiv gubernia, d 7 October 1917 in Kharkiv. Painter and art scholar. He studied at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts (1876–85) and in France (1886–8). He also painted in Italy, Spain, northern Africa, and Britain. After settling in Kharkiv in 1888, he was active in Ukrainian artistic circles and headed the architectural and art society there. He produced over 3,000 realist and impressionist works. They include a few portraits; historical paintings, genre paintings, and many landscapes. He copublished, with Mykola Samokysh, an album of Ukrainian folk ornamental motifs (1912), for which he painted over 100 designs, and an album on Ukrainian antiquity (1900, text by Dmytro Yavornytsky), for which he did 27 historical portraits...

Serhii Vasylkivsky

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

MODERNISM. An international movement in literature and art that emphasized the sense of a radical break with the past and the possibility of a transformed world. Emerging at the end of the nineteenth century as a rejection of realism and populism, it experimented with new literary and artistic forms, often under the influence of photography, film, and new technologies. Non-traditional materials were often used in architecture and sculpture, such as new metal alloys, glass, and synthetic plastics. The focus in literature and art was often on subjective perceptions and on the inner psychological conflicts and complexes of the urban intelligentsia. Depictions of individual personalities often included the eccentric, the taboo, and the deranged. Modernism coincided with and reflected the rapid growth of capitalist production and the rise of strong feminist, political, and national movements...

Modernism

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 Ecole 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 Independants and then exhibited his works there annually until 1914. In 1912 Archipenko joined a new artistic group--La Section d'Or, which numbered among its members P. Picasso, G. Braque, J. Gris, F. Leger, R. Delaunay, R. de la Fresnaye, J. Villon, F. Picabia, and M. Duchamp--and participated in the group's exhibitions...

Alexander Archipenko

HRYSHCHENKO, OLEKSA, b 2 April 1883 in Krolevets, Chernihiv gubernia, d 28 January 1977 in Vence, France. Modernist painter, art scholar, and author. While specializing in biology at Kyiv University and Moscow University, he studied painting with Serhii Svitoslavsky in Kyiv and K. Yuon in Moscow. During a brief stay in Paris in 1911 he met A. Lhote, Alexander Archipenko, and Le Fauconnier and became interested in cubism. From 1913 to 1914 he studied in Italy and wrote several studies of Italian primitive artists and the relation between the icon and Western art. During the Revolution of 1917, Hryshchenko became professor of the State Art Studios in Moscow and was offered the directorship of the Tretiakov Gallery, but he escaped from Russia via Crimea to Turkey...

Oleksa Hryshchenko

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 at the Munich and Vienna academies of art and exhibited his works at the Latour Gallery in Lviv in 1905 and in Munich in 1907. While living in Paris (1907-10), Boichuk visited the Academie Ranson and P. Serusier's studio, and, in 1909, he founded his own studio-school, at which his future wife Sofiia Nalepinska, Mykola Kasperovych, S. Baudouin de Courtenay, S. Segno, J. Lewakowska, O. Shaginian, and H. Szramm studied...

Mykhailo Boichuk

ANDRIIENKO-NECHYTAILO, MYKHAILO (known in France as Michel Andreenko), b 29 December 1894 in Odesa, d 12 November 1982 in Paris. Modernist painter and stage designer. In 1912-17 Andriienko-Nechytailo studied with N. Rerikh, A. Rylov, and I. Bilibin at the art school of the Society for the Promotion of the Arts in Saint Petersburg. In 1914-16 he exhibited the composition Black Dome and his first cubist works in Saint Petersburg. In 1914 he participated in an international graphics exhibition in Leipzig. In 1917-24 he devoted most of his time to designing stage sets for various theaters--in Saint Petersburg, Odesa, Prague, Paris, and for the Royal Opera in Bucharest. In Paris, where he lived from 1923, he also worked on sets for the films Casanova and Sheherazade and continued to paint in the cubist-constructivist style...

Mykhailo Andriienko-Nechytailo