Mehyk, Petro

Mehyk, Petro [Мегик, Петро], b 24 June 1899 in Vashkivtsi, Bukovyna, d 26 August 1992 in Philadelphia. Painter and graphic artist. A graduate of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts (1928), he taught drawing at secondary technical schools in Warsaw (1928–44), worked as an artist at the medical faculty of Warsaw University (1925–39), was a founding member of the Spokii art circle in Warsaw, and participated in Ukrainian art exhibitions in interwar Lviv, Warsaw, Prague, and Berlin. A postwar refugee and displaced person in Germany, in 1949 he emigrated to Philadelphia, where he directed the Ukrainian Art Studio, served on the executive of the Ukrainian Artists' Association in the USA, and edited Notatky z mystetstva/Ukrainian Art Digest. He painted portraits, landscapes, and still lifes in oil, tempera, and watercolor, but his favorite medium is pencil drawing. He compiled the album Rysunky (Drawings, 1962) and wrote studies of fresco painting technique (in Polish) and Ukrainian folk sculpture. A retrospective catalog of his works was published in 1979.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]