UK
Collection

Ukrainian Woman

Mykhailo Boichuk

  • Ukrainian Woman 2
  • Ukrainian Woman 3
Basic information
ID
ФМз-Ж-312
Author
Mykhailo Boichuk
Name
Ukrainian Woman
Date of creation
1st half of the 20th c.
Country
Ukraine
Technique
tempera painting
Material
cardboard oil
Dimensions (height x width, cm)
20.5 x 15.7
Additionally
Type
painting
Genre
portraiture
Provenance
Yaroslava Muzyka Fund
Exposition
Lozinski Palace
Information about author
Author
Mykhailo Boichuk
Artist's lifetime
1882–1937
Biography
Mykhailo Boichuk was a Ukrainian muralist and representative of the Ukrainian cultural Renaissance of the early twentieth century. He was the founder of Boichukism, the original school of Ukrainian art, and leader of the group of Boichukists. His name is given to an artistic phenomenon that combined the forms of folk art and the heritage of Byzantium and Proto-Renaissance. The French called it Renovation Byzantine (Neo-Byzantism). In 1913, he became a member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, and in 1917 – of the Ukrainian Scientific Society. Mykhailo Boichuk was born on October 30, 1882, in the village of Romanivka, near Terebovlia. He received an excellent artistic education thanks to the support of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky. The painter studied in Lviv, Vienna, Krakow, and later in Munich and Paris. In 1909, he founded his own school where Mykola Kasperovych, Zofia Nalepinska, Zofia Baudouin de Courtenay, Helena Schramm and others studied. In 1911, he returned to Lviv where he worked as a fine art restorer and muralist at the National Museum (now the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum in Lviv). In 1917, he became one of the founding professors of the Ukrainian State Academy of Arts where he headed the icon and fresco studio. In 1925, Mykhailo was one of the organizers of the Association of Revolutionary Art of Ukraine. The most significant works made together with students were paintings on modern themes in the Lutsk barracks in Kyiv in 1919, Sanatorium for Peasants on the coast of the Khadzhibey Estuary in Odesa between 1927 and 1928, and the Chervonozavodskyi Theater in Kharkiv between 1933 and 1935. All monumental paintings have not survived. On November 25, 1936, Mykhailo Boichuk was arrested and charged with Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism as well as being a leader of a national-fascist terrorist organization. The artist was shot, and most of his works were destroyed.
Object description
The bust-length image of a young woman is depicted against a dark ocher background. The woman has big bright eyes, a straight nose, and a small mouth. She is dressed in a white shirt with embroidered (black on a red background) rectangles on the sleeves and a red headscarf. A near to black rectangle, which may be the back of the chair, is depicted behind the woman in the background. On the back of the sheet, there are some illegible inscriptions.

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