January 12 marks the 114th anniversary of the birth of the outstanding Ukrainian folk artist Maria Prymachenko, a bright representative of naive art.
The origins of Ukrainian pictorial and poetic folklore, strange fantasy and folk wisdom are organically combined in her works. Most often, the artist depicted charming animals, flower arrangements and scenes from peasant life. Maria Prymachenko's paintings were exhibited at the World Exhibition in Paris, as well as in Warsaw, Sofia, Montreal, and Prague. This year, her works were presented for the first time in the USA at the exhibition "Beast of War, Bird of Hope".
Maria Prymachenko was born and lived all her life in the village of Bolotnia, Kyiv region. Her relatives still live here, her native house has been preserved. Now they plan to create a cultural complex in Bolotna, which will include an art residence, a museum, rooms for accommodation of artists, a cafe where dishes will be prepared according to Prymachenko's recipes. It is also planned to restore the Ivankiv Museum of History and Local History in the nearby town of Ivankiv, which burned down during the Russian invasion at the end of February 2022 - fortunately, all 14 of Prymachenko's paintings stored in the museum were saved then.
Now the works of Maria Prymachenko are presented in many museums of Ukraine.
1. The National Museum of Ukrainian Folk Decorative Art preserves the largest collection of Prymachenko's creative work, which includes more than 650 works. Among them are such well-known works as "The Green Elephant", "The Blue Bull", "The Black Beast", "The Lion Broke the Oak", "The Threat of War". Only a small part of them can be seen in the permanent exhibition.
2. The Zaporizhzhya Regional Art Museum presents the second largest collection of Maria Pryimachenko's works - 103 original works: "Levakha", "Monkey riding a four-headed beast", "Ukrainian ram did not gather rye", etc. Three early works of her son Fedir Prymachenko are also presented.
3. The Sumy Regional Art Museum named after Nikanor Onatsky has in its collection 29 works by Maria Prymachenko, in particular "Ordinary Monkey", "Ukrainian Monkey", "Beautiful Monkey", as well as "Halya carries water" on Ukrainian household themes.
4. The Khmelnytskyi Regional Art Museum - in total, 24 paintings of the artist are stored in the museum's funds, which are periodically displayed at thematic exhibitions.
5. The Chernihiv Regional Art Museum named after Hryhoriy Galagan preserves 23 works of Maria Prymachenko, among them "The humpbacked grasshopper", "The Ukrainian lion is not afraid of the cobra" and others.
6. The Museum of Folk Decorative Art in Kaniv - in the exposition are 21 paintings by the folk artist: one of them she personally gave to the Kaniv museum, another 20 were acquired by the museum at the end of the 20th century.
7. The Andrey Sheptytskyi National Museum in Lviv is proud of a small collection of five works by Maria Prymachenko.
8. The Odesa Art Museum also has five works by the artist in its collection, including "Bears Playing Football".
9. The Prykarpattia Museum of Art keeps two canvases by the famous artist in its collections - "Halya carries water" and "I'm a pas u pana".
10. In 2011, the Ternopil Regional Art Museum received from the Directorate of Art Exhibitions of Ukraine Maria Prymachenko's painting "October Cornflowers".
Museumization of Maria Prymachenko's works began in the 1930s, when the State Museum of Ukrainian Art (now the National Art Museum of Ukraine) received the first 200 works of the artist. Later, they were transferred to the National Museum of Ukrainian Folk Decorative Art, forming the basis of its collection. But recently, the National Art Museum received another painting by Prymachenko - "Flowers grew around the fourth block". It was handed over for safekeeping by a patron who bought the painting for half a million dollars at a charity auction, the money from which was transferred to the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
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