Shevchenko, Aleksandr or Oleksandr [Шевченко, Александр or Олександр; Ševčenko], b 7 July 1883 in Kharkiv, d 28 August 1948 in Moscow. Artist and art theorist. He began his studies in Kharkiv and continued them in Paris (1905–6) and at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (1907–9). In March 1912 he participated in the avant-garde Donkey’s Tail Exhibition in Moscow together with Vladimir Tatlin, Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova, Kazimir Malevich, and Marc Chagall. Their Neoprimitivist work was based on folk art and rural culture. In 1913 Shevchenko published, in Russian, booklets on Neoprimitivism, in which he expounded on his theory of the Eastern origins of Slavic art and its alienation from Western art, and on the principles of cubism and other modern art trends. In 1914 he took part in Exhibition No. 14: Futurists, Rayonists, Primitives, organized by Larionov. In 1919 he, Oleksa Hryshchenko, and their students organized in Moscow the 12th State Exhibition of 182 works by 38 artists. Its catalog contained Shevchenko’s and Hryshchenko’s manifesto and articles on ‘color dynamics’ and ‘tectonic primitivism.’ In 1920–30 Shevchenko was an instructor in the painting division of the Moscow Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops and participated in many large group exhibitions in Moscow and abroad. He later taught at the Higher Artistic and Technical Institute in Moscow. An album of his paintings and graphics was published in Moscow in 1966, and a collection of materials by and about him appeared there in 1980.

Nestor Mykytyn

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]