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Saint John

Mykhailo Osinchuk

Basic information

ID: ФМз-Г-IV-934
Author: Mykhailo Osinchuk
Name: Saint John
Technique: linocut
Material: paper
Dimensions (height x width, cm): 20.9 x 18.2

Additionally

Type: graphic art
Genre: religious
Provenance: Yaroslava Muzyka Fund

Information about author

Author: Mykhailo Osinchuk
Artist's lifetime: 1890–1969
Country: Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ukrainian SSR, the USA
Biography: Mykhailo Osinchuk (16 September 1890, Holoshyntsi village (now part of Koziari village, Ternopil region) – 13 February 1969, New York, USA) was a Ukrainian monumentalist, iconographer, graphic artist, painter, and educator. Professor, member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, co-founder of the Association of Independent Ukrainian Artists (1931), and honorary chairman of the Ukrainian Artist's Association in the USA (1952). The artist created new forms of 20th-century icon painting based on traditional Ukrainian folk art, which continues the centuries-old tradition of Byzantine icons in Ukraine. In 1910, he graduated from Ternopil Gymnasium and later studied at the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts (course of J. Pankiewicz) (1910–1914). Simultaneously, he attended the Faculty of Philosophy at Jagiellonian University. Osinchuk studied Byzantine icon painting, mosaic, and tempera painting technology. From November 1918, he served as a cartographer in the Secretariat of Internal Affairs of the West Ukrainian People's Republic in Stanislav (now Ivano-Frankivsk). He was a member of the Ukrainian Galician Army and the Ukrainian People's Army. In the 1920s, he taught at Ukrainian gymnasiums in Drohobych and Rohatyn. Since 1922, the artist lived and worked in Lviv. In 1944, fearing Stalinist terror, he moved to Germany and then to the United States (New York). In 1964, Osinchuk's personal exhibition took place in Philadelphia (USA). Later, a monograph dedicated to the artist's work, titled "Mykhailo Osinchuk. Mystets-Maliar" ("Mykhailo Osinchuk. Artist-Painter)" was published in New York. Mykhailo Osinchuk was the author of over a dozen iconostases and individual icons, historical compositions, woodcuts, bookplates, and illustrations for works by Ukrainian writers. His work includes portraits of Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytskyi and Cardinal Yosyf Slipyi, among others. In the 1930s, in collaboration with artist Pavlo Kovzhun, Osinchuk created church polychromes in the Ukrainian Byzantine style in more than twelve churches in Galicia. He also participated in the interior decoration of St. George's Cathedral in Lviv. The Gallery's collection (Yaroslava Muzyka fund) contains 14 paintings and about 40 graphic works by the artist, including a bookplate for Anna Stefanovych's books, which in 1933 won an award from the Society of Ukrainian Writers and Journalists in Lviv.

Object description

An iconographic bust depicting Saint John the Apostle shows him as a venerable elder touching his lips with his right hand, symbolising silence (icon type "John the Theologian in Silence"). Beside the saint are an angel and the tetramorphic symbol of the Evangelist John – an eagle with a book in its talons. Above the apostle's head is an inscription, "Holy Evangelist John".

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

Saint John

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