Dzyndra, Mykhailo

Dzyndra, Mykhailo [Дзиндра, Михайло], b 8 November 1921, Demnia, Lviv county, Galicia, d 8 September 2005 in Lviv. Modernist sculptor; brother of Yevhen Dzyndra. Born in a village that was an important center of stone carving in western Ukraine, Dzyndra developed an interest in sculpture at an early age. In the 1930s he studied at a private studio of Lviv sculptor Andrii Koverko, and in 1941 he enrolled in the Lviv School of Applied and Decorative Art, where he studied under Mykola Mukhyn and Ivan Severa. In 1944 he joined the flow of refugees escaping westward before the advance of the Red Army; he first moved to Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, and then to Germany. A displaced person in Germany, he actively participated in the Ukrainian artistic life in the displaced persons camps and joined the Professional Association of Visual Artists in Germany. In 1951 he emigrated to the United States of America. Initially, he lived in New York, and later in Florida. He was a member of the Ukrainian Artists' Association in the USA.

Dzyndra created many, mostly abstract, compositions in cement, wire, and other materials. An influence of the style of Alexander Archipenko is evident in Dzyndra's work. Exhibits of his works were held in Bamberg (1945), Nuremberg (1946), and the United States, including an important solo exhibit in New York in 1978. Following the 1991 Ukraine’s Declaration of Independence, he returned to Ukraine in 1991 and settled in Lviv. Based on Dzyndra’s gift of 808 of his sculptures, the Museum of Modern Sculpture by Mykhailo Dzyndra was established in Briukhovychi near Lviv as a branch of the Lviv Art Gallery.

[This article was updated in 2026.]