MYKHAILO KOZYK – ARTIST AND EXECUTIVE: RETURN FROM OBLIVION

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the half forgotten Ukrainian artist Mykhailo Kozyk (1879–1947) – a master of impressive still lifes, portraits, landscape paintings, genre paintings and monumental church paintings, as well as an artist of original illustrations. Kozyk belongs to the generation of artists who entered the arena of Ukrainian cultural and artistic life at the beginning of the 20th century. The heyday of his talent came in the 1930s – the first half of the 1940s. During the years of his work, M. Kozyk created more than 500 paintings and monumental paintings, as well as several hundred graphic compositions (most of which are considered lost). For more than 25 years, he was involved in the formation of higher art education in Ukraine. Kozyk taught and was the head of Kyiv Art School (1915), held the position of professor at the Kyiv Institute of Architecture (1918), and Kyiv Art Institute (1925); was a teacher (1932), and then a professor at Kharkiv State Art Institute (1939), acting director of the National Institute of Art during the German occupation of Kharkiv (November 1941 – November 1942), taught painting at the Lviv Academy of Arts (1944). Among his students, the most famous are: Ye. Volobuyev, V. Golovaty, N. Umansky, F. Nyrod, O. Vandalovsky, M. Ashikhman, M. Slipchenko, L. Chernov, V. Yatsenko, G. Tomenko, O. Yakovenko, S. Gruzberg. A purposeful study of the artist’s work began after 1979, when thanks to the insistence of children, friends, and grateful students, the 100th anniversary of the artist’s birth was celebrated. During the time of independence, the period of the early 1910s, and middle 1920s of the master’s work was well studied. However, the period of maturity of the master associated with Kharkiv (1932–1942), as well as the years of his forced stay in Western Ukraine (1943–1946), are not sufficiently reflected in the existing publications. A large part of the present publication is devoted to the last fourteen years of the artist’s life and work. A significant part of the illustrations is published for the first time.