The history of art is much older than the history of museums and galleries. Art is far more than exhibitions and institutions: it is a never-ending vital process, which allows humanity to explore and experience the world around us. People have been using visual images as a creative medium to express their inner worlds and explain their surroundings for as long as they exist. The lifestyle of modern people and that of the cavemen is completely different, but the essential need for self-expression remains unchanged.
It is important to understand that division of art into professional and non-professional is rather artificial. The desire for creation and self-expression is inherent not only in professional artists, but also in people who have never heard of art education or even the existence of galleries. Interestingly, over the past 150 years, professional artists have been constantly returning to primitive art in search of inspiration and identity.
There are many definitions that outline the phenomenon of non-professional art: naïve art, primitivism, art brut, etc. Today, all these phenomena are united by one term: outsider art. It is also important to note here, that there is a substantial difference between folk art and outsider art. Although they can have stylistic and technical similarities, folk art is rather practical and based on traditions passed from generation to generation, while outsider art is very personal and unique, inspired by the spontaneous inner drive of the artist.
In Ukraine of the first half of the 20th century, the emergence of the radical modernist movement has given a significant impetus to the development of outsider art. Both avant-garde and self-taught artists had found themselves outside of the boundaries of the art acknowledged by the Soviet rule. Just as the Parisian avant-garde artists tried to return to the origins of art such as rock paintings and African masks, Ukrainian avant-garde and outsider artists had embarked on their journey of going back to the roots and restore their identity. In Soviet Ukraine, there was no place for artists who did not fit into the system. They were often considered mentally ill and locked up in psychiatric wards and prisons, or simply denied entrance to the “art world.” However, when socialist realism and Soviet power did not interfere with creativity, naive art had resulted.
Artists who did fit into the canons of “Soviet folk art” were a little more fortunate. Thanks to this, we know the names of Maria Prymachenko and Kateryna Bilokur.
Maria Prymachenko
Maria Prymachenko (1909-1997) is the most outstanding representative of Ukrainian naïve art of the 20th century. The world knows Maria as an old woman in a hustka (headscarf), who painted unique masterpieces in a small village somewhere on the edge of the world. However, such a strong artistic voice as hers could not have appeared out of nowhere. Paraska Vasylivna, Maria’s mother, was a skilled embroiderer, who had most likely provided her daughter with the sense of color and shape. Her father, Oksentii Hryhorovych, was a carpenter who decorated the fences he made with head figures.
In the 1930s, Prymachenko started her work at the experimental workshop of the Kyiv State Museum of Ukrainian Art, located on the territory of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra. Later she worked for a film studio in Kyiv.
The world of Maria Pryimachenko is primarily mythological and zoological. Her paintings depict fabulous mythological beasts rooting from folk legends and fairy-tales, and inspired bу real life and culture of the Ukrainian реорlе. Images often had арреаred to Maria in dreams and later materialized in her compositions.
The time at which Maria Prymachenko had to live and create, was the time of The Executed Renaissance: a generation of Ukrainian artists who were massively persecuted, imprisoned and killed for their art, and whose works were mostly destroyed by Stalinist government. In that tragic reality, Prymachenko’s colorful surreal world with fantastic animals and flowers was a method of escapism for her: a safe and cozy oasis; a comfort space that she has created in the midst of the darkness.
“From the very beginning, everything flew, even trees and flowers, and only then did animals fly. Birds and flowers, like embroidered shirts, were created for joy. And animals were created to be feared. When no one is afraid of anyone, the earth will end”.
After visiting an exhibition of Prymachenko in Paris, Picasso said, “I bow down before the artistic miracle of this brilliant Ukrainian.” Maria Prymachenko is an Honored Artist of Ukraine and a Taras Shevchenko Prize Winner.
Kateryna Bilokur
Kateryna Bilokur (1900-1961) is another bright representative of Ukrainian naive art, who had never received a formal education. She was an ordinary girl from a poor rural family, whose daily life was one of dreary, hard physical labor and household chores. However, painting became a huge passion for Kateryna since childhood. She created her own brushes, primed her canvases, and made paints from beet juice, berries, onions, viburnum, herbs and whatever she could find. She was often at labor all day and painted during the night until she could no longer stay awake.
Kateryna Bilokur’s artwork is a festive realm of flowers, vegetables, and fruits. She was surrounded by nature, so she painted it.
It’s amazing how Kateryna, not knowing the rules of working with color and tone, could create such brilliant compositions, as if she was working with old Dutch masters. Bilokur also had an impeccable feeling of rhythm: she knew how to combine elements on the canvas in order to create dramatic tension.
Some of her works eventually found their way to Europe, where it is said that none other than Pablo Picasso not only viewed her work, but became entranced, staring at her paintings for hours, as if in a reverie. Picasso suggested that if her works were widely known, Bilokur would be the talk of the world.
In 1956 Kateryna Bilokur was named the People’s Artist of Ukraine, which is an incredibly high honor. Her image was also issued on a Ukrainian coin.
Polina Rayko
Polina Rayko (1928-2004) has a very special history of creativity. She spent her entire life working on her property and collective farm, taking care of her husband and their two children. Over the span of less than 10 years, Polina had endured the deaths of her daughter and husband, the beatings and imprisonment of her alcoholic son, who had eventually died from liver disease, a couple years after the death of her other family members. Polina’s house became completely empty, and she found herself in a deep mental crisis. Thankfully, art has become her therapy.
Polina had picked up a painting brush for a first time in her life at the age of 69, and started painting on her fence. “In order not to cry, I started singing, stood on the table, drew, and sang: the house is empty.” She has found her solace in creation and covered her entire house with paintings in the span of 4 years.
Being her instrument of emotional sublimation and self-reflection, Polina Rayko’s artwork is deeply intimate. Some images are inspired by her personal life, while others — by her religious beliefs and political views. Each of them represents an idea that was important to Polina: an angel with a red star surrounded by white doves; the Mother of God with a baby; a girl who looks like either a soldier or a nurse, with rifles behind her back; and so on. Such abundance of images makes her house an intensely emotional space. It feels like you are looking at the open inner world of a person. Polina’s artwork is her powerful protest against the uncontrollable pain that life inflicts.
“Let’s try to paint something that will make the soul happier.”
For nearly ten years, Polina Rayko’s work was unknown to the general audience. However, eventually, her painted house has become one of the most famous tourist spots in the Kherson region. It have piqued the interest of not only the local artists and art fans, but also international art reviewers, museum curators, and people who value artistic expression worldwide.
Unfortunately, in July 2023 Polina Rayko’s house, along with the paintings inside, has been flooded as a result of destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant by the Russian military. The village of Oleshky, where the house is located, is still under Russian occupation.
Maria Sinyakova
Maria Sinyakova (1890-1984) is a representative of the Kharkiv Futurists. She is one of the five sisters, born into a wealthy family in Kharkiv. Maria studied at the Blue Lily studio of E. Agafonov, and was a member of the radical Kharkiv groups Vikus and Budiak, but has always claimed that she had learned to paint on her own. Before the First World War, Maria traveled a lot around Germany and France.
Sinyakova paid great attention to anti-war and feminist themes in her work. In a series of works called War she depicted scenes of violence against women. Men in her paintings grab women by the hair and cut off their heads. In this way, Maria depicted the horror of despotic power over the land, which has no power to resist. It is naked, disarmed, and its strength is in nature. War, on the other hand, is an unnatural phenomenon. This is why Sinyakova tends to religious imagery; in particular, The Last Judgment. The avant-garde rhythm creates a feeling of anxiety, and dominating colors are bright and contrasting to enhance the dramatic and disturbing effect.
Hanna Sobachko-Shostak
Hanna Sobachko-Shostak (1883-1965) is a representative of so called Peasant Futurism, born in a small village in Poltava region. Initially working at the embroidery workshop, she has emerged as an artist under the mentorship of Yevheniia Prybylska, a shop owner who has recognized Hanna’s talent as an artist.
In her artwork, Hanna combined folk traditions with elements of avant-garde language. She turned unusual flowers into extraordinary fish, birds, and insects, creating a harmonious folk ornament of a mysterious, surreal world. The lush shapes of Sobachko-Shostak’s flowers are reminiscent of the Ukrainian Baroque style and Cossack embroidery.
“If I painted a flower exactly as it is, as everyone sees it, people in the village would say to me: “That’s not your flower, Hanna, but a natural, garden flower.” That’s why I was inventing from my head.“
In 1918, Hanna Sobachko’s artwork was showcased in Kyiv. An exhibition was organised by a French artist Alexandra Exter, who has been Hanna’s mentor and a major inspiration for her. In 1936, Hanna has taught composition in an experimental workshop at the Kyiv State Museum of Ukrainian Art, where on of her students was renowned Ukrainian artist Maria Prymachenko.
Sobachko’s decorative panels and embroideries were showcased at exhibitions in Berlin and Paris. When Henri Matisse saw her work, he said, “Not you need to learn from us, but we need to learn from you, because you have great national art, icons, and unique folk art by Hanna Sobachko.”
Yevmen Pshechenko
Yevmen Pshechenko (1880-1933) is a primitivist artist from Verbivka, who worked at Natalia Davydova’s artel. In 1915, his works were showcased at the Lemercier Gallery in Moscow, along with works of Olexandra Exter, Kazimir Malevich, Nina Henke-Meller, and Ivan Puni. Unlike other artists, he didn’t name his works, but only signed them, so today they are mostly just named “decorative panels”.
The main elements in Yevmen’s artwork are bizarre animals, flowers, and agricultural tools such as a rake or scythe, from which he weaved various compositions. With the advent of the USSR, Soviet symbols also began to appear in his works. In the 1920s, Yevmen had created a series of works dedicated to the circus.
Vasyl
Dovhoshyia
Vasyl Dovhoshyia (1892-1933) is another Ukrainian artist influenced by Exter and Malevich. In the 1920s, art critics attributed the originality of his works to his familiarity with Japanese art, as he had allegedly visited Japan during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905.
Vasyl has his own recognizable style. He skillfully depicted various animals, combining the folk and the avant-garde in a manner that was unique to him. His balanced compositions are based on a flat color spot with virtuoso accent lines.
Unfortunately, both Vasyl Dovhoshyia and Yevmen Pshechenko did not survive the Holodomor (a massive starvation of Ukrainians by the Soviet government that happened in 1932-1933). However, their artwork has uniquely synthesized Ukrainian folk aesthetics and the achievements of modernism. Today, their paintings belong to collection of the National Museum of Folk Decorative Arts.
George Voronovsky
George Voronovsky is a self-taught artist who had to leave Ukraine and move to the United States during the World War II. He emigrated to Philadelphia and moved to Miami Beach in 1972, where he stayed at the Colony Hotel for a long time. George filled his hotel room with hundreds of his works, including paintings on pizza boxes, sculptures made of styrofoam, and art objects made of garbage. A journalist later called his hotel room “an oasis of light and color.”
Voronovsky’s artwork is a vibrant depiction of Ukrainian everyday life and traditions, with a touch of Ukrainian folklore and mythology: famous cathedrals of Kyiv, wheat fields, sunflowers, watermelon plantations, traditional dancing and celebrations, musical instruments, scenes from Ukrainian fairy tales (e.g. Turnip), agricultural scenes such as gathering wild mushrooms.
As an immigrant being away from home, George used his art to tap into his distant Ukrainian memories and express his warm feelings for homeland, while also depicting its unique beauty.
Heorhii
Maliavin
Heorhii Maliavin is a representative of Odesa’s urban naïve, better known locally as Zhora Kochehar (“Zhora Stove”), as he always walked around dirty, and was shunned by even the filthiest sellers of Odesa’s markets. There is very little information remained about him, but locals say that he worked as a guard in an Odesa prison until he retired.
Heorhii repainted both works of classical art (Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci) and modernists (Van Gogh, Matisse) in a distinctive naive style. Interestingly, he was afraid to paint on the canvas in order not to spoil it, so he painted on the back. Although, most of his paintings were created on corrugated cardboard.
Bozhena Chaharova (1983) is a contemporary artist from the village in Zhytomyr region. Art became her means of dealing with paranoid schizophrenia. During her treatment at the Zhytomyr Psychiatric Hospital, she has discovered embroidery as an art therapy. However, Bozhena was not interested in traditional folk patterns. In her artwork, she reveals societal and political themes, and does it in a remarkably intelligent way. In 2018-2019, her works had been showcased at the Ya Gallery in Kyiv and the Zhovten Cinema in Zhytomyr.
Oleksandr Liapin
Oleksandr Liapin (1956) is a professional photographer, journalist, curator, and art critic from Kyiv region, who likes to provoke and engage with the public. He had started studying at the Karpenko-Kary State Institute of Theatre, but then graduated from the History Department of the Kyiv Pedagogical Institute, where he also wrote a dissertation later.
Oleksandr’s artwork is quite aggressive outsiderism, art brut. In his exhibitions My Head Explodes, Kill the Photo, and Unstable Objects, Oleksandr allowed people to touch his art objects, which were cracking, crumbling, and bursting in response, creating a total chaos.
“There can’t be any concept here – where does it come from in naive art? All these images are born from physical sensations or from experiences, dreams, and transform themselves into such visual stories. You just squeeze a few colors from different tubes onto the canvas and follow them where they lead you. This is the principle of singular art, the art of outsiders.”
Dmytro Moldovanov
Dmytro Moldovanov (1967) is a naive artist from Mykolaiv, who calls himself an aborigine of the industrial zone. He studied at the Odesa Art School, but at some point decided to quit his professional art education.
Dmytro’s paintings are mostly depictions of an industrial city. His artwork is about alienation, loneliness, low living standards, and a damaged environment. The bright colors and “childishness” of his paintings contrast with the grey routine of the Mykolaiv industrial zone. However, according to Dmytro, even everyday city scenes, such as long lines at the supermarket or beer stalls, have the possibility of a man and a woman falling in love with each other, and this romance seems to turn mundanity into a magical world.
Petro
Gonchar
Petro Honchar (1949) is a Ukrainian primitivist artist with a classical art education, who is perfectly fluent in artistic form, but deliberately simplifies his paintings to look like naive. Petro grew up in a family of the famous Ukrainian folk art collector Ivan Honchar, which had largely formed his professional guidelines. Today, Petro Honchar is the director of the Ivan Honchar Museum – a Ukrainian folk culture center based on his father’s collection.
The topics explored by Petro Honchar in his artwork are deeply related to Ukrainian mythology and national self-identification. The main characters of his paintings are Ukrainian Cossacks, boys and girls, trees, clouds wrapped in dreamy childhood memories, folk legends. In each of his works, you can sense the unquenchable calmness and kindness. The scenes on his paintings are very recognizable yet very well stylized. The geometric ornamental flatness is intertwined with the rhythmic and colorful harmony of Ukrainian traditional icon painting, which unwittingly refers to the works of the Boychukists. According to Petro Honchar, he deliberately seeks to get rid of direct realistic expression, because “realism by itself can only depict an outer shell.”
“I want nothing to remain of the form but the essence, the idea itself. In my opinion, the more you deconstruct the form, the more you can express your own inner world and philosophy through it. When I destroy the form, all that remains is the idea that I put into it.”
Volodymyr Loboda
Volodymyr Loboda (1943) is one of the most prominent representatives of Ukrainian underground art. He is a painter, graphic artist, sculptor, and poet born in Dnipro. Volodymyr studied at Tetiana Yablonska’s workshop at the Kyiv Art Institute. However, after completing his first year, he confidently chose his own independent path, where he tried to synthesize West European art and Ukrainian folk art. Being filled with bold fluctuations from realistic forms to non-figurative ones, his artwork went far beyond the officially accepted Socialist Realism and was never acknowledged in the USSR. Loboda believes that true art is impossible without a feeling of transcendence.
Volodymyr Loboda has a special talent for using psychological tension to express human relationships in his creations. Landscapes also play a remarkable role in his art, as he depicts them in a quite original way, masterfully turning primitive images of trees into meaningful artistic symbols.
Loboda’s work with sculpture is also extraordinary. Using wood, stone, and metal, he creates incredibly original forms, synthesizing prehistoric sculpture with Western European artistic trends.
His sculpture echoes the work of Giacometti and Brancusi, combined with ancient Polovtsian and Scythian female figures from the Ukrainian steppes. After being formed, Loboda’s sculptures are painted with contrasting vibrant colors, which gives them a remarkable polychrome sound. Volodymyr Loboda’s plastic art is an organic continuation of his painting and graphics.
Nataliia Brichuk
Nataliia Brichuk is a young Ukrainian artist from Rivne, who began her professional career in 2016. Since then, she has developed her unique style and aesthetic, being majorly inspired by Ukrainian traditions and folk. Nataliia’s artwork revolves around freedom, courage, strength, and self-identity. Her artistic style is simple yet bold, often with folk motives framed into an abstract form.
Iryna
Maksymova
Iryna Maksymova is a contemporary Ukrainian artist born in 1991 in Kolomyia (western Ukraine). The pandemic of 2020 encouraged Iryna to leave her “normal job” as a graphic designer and try painting, which she has dreamt about since childhood. Inspired by the artwork of Maria Prymachenko and initially experimenting with her boyfriend’s paints at her free time, Iryna eventually has discovered her own art style – figurative and naive. Maksymova’s paintings give an innocent and light voice to the world problems that touch her personally, such as feminism, cruelty, and equality.
Iryna is very intentional about cultivating Ukrainian primitivism art by adding traditional Ukrainian motifs to her paintings and developing a newer form for them.
Dzvinya
Podliashetska
Dzvinya Podliashetska is a contemporary Ukrainian artist from Lviv. She first studied graphic design at the Ivan Trush Lviv State College of Arts, and later fine arts at the Ukrainian Printmaking Academy. Dzvinya’s art is expressive and centered around psychology, human interactions, and emotions. She creates her paintings without preliminary sketches; sourcing inspiration from small mundane moments as well as existential and political problems that touch her, and experiencing them on the canvas.
The main themes of Dzvinya’s art are the relationships between people, a man and a woman, a person and nature. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is also an important subject of her work. Her art reveals the issues of violence, anger, and cruelty, but in a somewhat comical and sarcastic way. Dzvinya deliberately chooses this method to show how evil loses its power when it becomes funny.
“It is important for me to see the light during dark days. I always try to find it, that’s why I paint dark things with bright colors.”
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