Bozhii, Mykhailo [Божій, Михайло; Božij, Myxajlo], b 20 September 1911 in Mykolaiv, d 1 January 1990 in Odesa. Portrait painter of the socialist realist style, member of the USSR Academy of Arts. Most of Bozhii’s portraits are of military or political leaders or ‘heroes of labor.’ His best-known works are The Nurse (1955) and the portraits of Taras Shevchenko (1960), Vladimir Lenin (1967), and Ludwig van Beethoven (1969). Bozhii received many state awards. A monograph about him by F. Shaposhnykov was published in Kyiv in 1963.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]