Mikhail Boichuk

Boichuk, Mikhail L’vovich 

Born Oct. 30, 1882, in the village of Romanovka near Ternopol’; died in 1939. Soviet epic artist.

Boichuk studied in the Kraków (1899–1905), Munich, and Vienna academies of art, and traveled in Italy. He worked in Paris (1908–11), then in L’vov, and from 1917, in Kiev. He directed the creation of frescoes (not preserved) in the Lutsk Barracks in Kiev (1919) and in the sanatorium on the Khadzhibei Estuary in Odessa (1928). Seeking to express the enthusiasm of the new life in monumentally epic forms, Boichuk drew on the work of Giotto, ancient Ukrainian icons, and Ukrainian folk art. However, the stylized approach of Boichuk and his school (the Boichukisty) often failed to meet the requirements of new Soviet subjects. In the murals of the Krasnozavodskii Theater in Khar’kov (1933–35), Boichuk and his pupils overcame the conventional and archaic forms typical of their early works. In 1925, Boichuk joined the Ukrainian Association of Revolutionary Art. He was a professor in the Ukrainian Academy of Arts (1917–22) and the Kiev Art Institute (1924–36).

REFERENCES

Istoriia ukrains’kogo mystetstva, vol. 5. Kiev, 1967. Pages 17–19, 43–44, 110–120, 286–290. (With bibliography.)