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Project of Initial Letters for the Alphabet

Olena Kulchytska

  • Project of Initial Letters for the Alphabet 2
Basic information
ID
Г-V-2167
Author
Olena Kulchytska
Name
Project of Initial Letters for the Alphabet
Technique
drawing
Material
paper Indian ink pen pencil
Dimensions (height x width, cm)
7.3 x 21
Additionally
Type
graphic art
Genre
illustration
Provenance
Purchased from D. Semchyshyn, 1988
Information about author
Author
Olena Kulchytska
Artist's lifetime
1877–1967
Country
Ukraine
Biography
Olena Kulchytska (September 15, 1877, Berezhany – March 8, 1967, Lviv) is an outstanding Ukrainian artist who worked in such types of art as painting, graphics, arts and crafts, carpet weaving, created majolica, book illustrations and postcards, bookplates, bronze and enamel products, furniture and interior design. She received her primary education in Lviv and began her art education at the Lviv School of Arts and Crafts (1901). Then, she completed her art training at the private studio run by Stanislaw Batowski-Kaczor and Roman Bratkowski (1901–1903). In 1907, she graduated from the Vienna School of Industrial Design. Olena Kulchytska's studies in Vienna coincided with the heyday of modern art in Austria, so her work is characterised by decorative form, a tendency to symbolic-allegorical interpretation of images, broad generalisations, and plane solutions. After graduation, the artist taught drawing for many years at secondary schools of Lviv and Przemysl. From 1940, Kulchytska headed the Lviv Ethnographic Museum's folk art department. Between 1945 and 1954, the artist taught graphics at Ivan Fedorov Ukrainian Polygraphic Institute (Ukrainian Academy of Printing), whose professor she became in 1948. In 1967, Olena Kulchytska was awarded the Taras Shevchenko Prize. The artist was famous for her graphic works. She performed engravings on wood, linoleum, and metal in the complex techniques of aquatint and mezzotint. Her following graphic thematic cycles are known: "From the History of Prince Times", "The Hardships of Ukrainian People", "Glorious Women of the Past", "Legends of Mountains and Forests", "Saints of the Ukrainian Church", "Portraits of Ukrainian Writers", "Folk Construction of the Western Regions of Ukraine". During her life, numerous engravings and watercolours by Olena Kulchytska were exhibited in Ukraine and abroad, particularly in Warsaw, Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Rome, Toronto, and Chicago.
Object description
Within the horizontally elongated plane of the paper, the composition depicts the dark outlines of stylised letters of the alphabet: “Ю, ю, Ф, ф, Х, х”. A thin line in the plane of the circle of the letter “Ю” on the left depicts a man in Cossack clothing; behind the next letter, a light thin line outlines an image of a crowd of men in hats. Next to the contours of the letters are depicted against the background of paint tubes and a wooden gate with a fence. The following background scenes depict a man sowing grain and a fragment of a peasant's hut under a thatched roof.
Inscriptions
Along the bottom edge, there are pencil inscriptions: “yunak [young man], yurba [crowd], farba [paint], firtka [gate], khliborob [farmer], khata [hut]”.
Legal regulation
Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

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