Taran, Andrii

Taran, Andrii [Таран, Андрій], b 31 August 1883 in Nikopol, Katerynoslav county, Katerynoslav gubernia, d 5 March 1967 in Leningrad. Painter. He studied painting in Penza (1901–5), Saint Petersburg (1906–9), and Paris (1909–12). In 1923 he returned to Ukraine to teach at the Kyiv State Art Institute, where he organized a mosaic workshop in 1937. A member of the Association of Revolutionary Art of Ukraine (1925–7) and Union of Contemporary Artists of Ukraine (1927–32), he painted large industrial landscapes, such as The Blast Furnace Begins to Smoke (1927), At the Dnipro Hydroelectric Station (1929), Kryvyi Rih Etudes (1937), and At the Quarry (1938), and still lifes done in a postimpressionist style.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]