Create in Me a Pure Heart, O God, And Renew a Steadfast Spirit within Me: On Some New Details of Creative Biographies of Sisters Olena and Olha Kulchytska (From Archival Materials)

Abstract

The article’s purpose is to publish interesting and significant archival materials, introduced into scientific circulation for the first time, namely: Biographical Data, Recorded from O. L. Kulchytska in September 1–3 1947 in the Sanatorium “Syniak” in Transcarpathia; Olena Kulchytska’s Autobiography of the 1940s old and an excerpt from a S. Butnyk-Siverskyi’s archival encyclopedic entry about his participation in Olena Kulchytska’s exhibitions up to and including 1947, accompanied by an introductory article and commentary. These archival documents will be interesting and useful in further research of creative biographies of the mistresses. The materials are stored at the Department of Visual and Applied Arts of the M. Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) and are published with keeping to authorial style, spelling, and punctuation with minor correcting. The creation of the sisters Olena Lvivna Kulchytska (1877–1967) and Olha-Melaniia Lvivna (1873–1940) Kulchytska occupies a prominent, significant place in the history of domestic art and organically fits into the context of European art. Natural talent, intelligence, brilliant knowledge of their craft, artistic taste, ability to emanate their own refined and unique world, their attitudes to art, dignity of soul and intentions – these are the features that were inherent in both sisters. The range of Olena Kulchytska’s creative heritage is wide and well-known among specialists, educated public, and admirers of fine arts. The artist successfully worked in various kinds of art: graphic art, painting, and applied arts. A gifted draftsman, watercolourist, aquafortist, and illustrator, in particular of children’s books, it is she who is associated with the revival of woodcutting and linocutting techniques in domestic art. Olena Kulchytska worked in the portraiture, genre painting, landscape painting, as well as in the genre of religious painting (she created a unique iconostasis); she was engaged in art weaving, modelling and designing of clothes, furniture, and architectural décor. In addition, she made sketches for ceramics and carpets. Known for her wonderful enamels, the mistress also worked in the fields of metal, small-scale sculpture, and jewellery. Olena Kulchytska devoted a lot of time to teaching and ethnography. Her intense exhibition activity is also impressive. Olha Kulchytska is a renowned mistress of decorative and applied arts, a carpet weaver; she was also engaged in pedagogical practice. Together with her sister, she created distinguished works of carpet art. Certainly, the archival materials now published should greatly complement creative biographies of the mistresses, mostly Olena Kulchytska, with new details.