Horniatkevych, Damian

Horniatkevych, Damian [Горняткевич, Дам’ян; Hornjatkevyč, Dam’jan], b 13 November 1892 in Lisko, Lemko region, Galicia, d 3 March 1980 in Kerhonkson, New York State, USA. Painter and art scholar. As a student at the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts, he researched works by medieval Ukrainian painters in Poland (among them frescoes from 1470 in the Wawel Cathedral in Cracow) and then published his results in Postup (Lviv) (1922–4) and Notatky z mystetstva/Ukrainian Art Digest (1965). After graduating in 1923, he studied portraiture in Dresden and landscape art in Munich (1925). Returning to Galicia, he painted mostly portraits and studied folk art. In the 1930s he painted four churches—in Nastasiv, Uhniv, Nemyriv, and Vorobliachyn. A displaced person after the Second World War, he immigrated to the United States of America in 1949. He was vice-president of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the US and head of its fine arts section (1951–70). He continued to paint in a realist style, concentrating on landscapes. Exhibitions of his work were held in New York in 1964, 1966, and posthumously in 1981. His publications include a monograph on the art of Taras Shevchenko, Taras Schewtschenko als Maler (1964), and numerous articles on Ukrainian artists, folk art, and the history of art.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]