In her childhood Maria Prymachenko suffered from polio and this painful disease influenced her life. Her relatives reported that she grew to be a thoughtful and considerate person, having compassion for nature and every living thing. The artist herself described the beginning of her artistic call:
Once, as a young girl, I was tending a gaggle of geese. When I got with them to a sandy beach, on the bank of the river, after crossing a field dotted with wild flowers, I began to draw real and imaginary flowers with a stick on the sand… Later, I decided to paint the walls of my house using natural pigments. After that I’ve never stopped drawing and painting.
Maria Prymachenko
Rebecca Bengal. “Russian Forces Destroyed the Wild and Beautiful Art of Maria Prymachenko”. Vice, 1 March 2022. Accessed 2 March 2022.
The works of Maria Prymachenko can be subdivided into thematic, symbolic, and ornamental pieces. Her paintings are filled with imaginative details and fantastic creatures, including beautifully plumed birds and other animals which argue, play music, and dine together. She loved colorful, symmetrical depictions of decorative floral arrangements.
An important subject of the artist’s works was the struggle between good and evil. It permeates most of Prymachenko’s works, but good always wins. It is embodied in the images of “kind” beasts and birds (lions, bears, hares, storks, swallows) juxtaposed against evil. Even though we sometimes don’t see a particular painting as a pacifistic work of art, its title gives us no doubt. These anti-war masterpieces and their titles seem to be of particular importance now. Maria Prymachenko lost her husband in World War II; she never remarried.
Maria Prymachenko, Pretty Pig, 1965, National Museum of Ukrainian Folk Decorative Art, Kyiv, Ukraine.
Maria Prymachenko, May That Nuclear War Be Cursed!, 1978. WikiArt.
Maria Prymachenko, Spring Revels of Hares and Birds, 1968, National Museum of Ukrainian Folk Decorative Art, Kyiv, Ukraine.
Maria Prymachenko, Blue Ox, 1947. WikiArt.
Maria Prymachenko, Little Shepherds, 1959, National Museum of Ukrainian Folk Decorative Art, Kyiv, Ukraine.
Maria Prymachenko, May I Give This Ukrainian Bread to All People in This Big Wide World, 1982.
Maria Prymachenko, Flowers for Peace, 1965. Arthive.
Maria Prymachenko, Tiger Laughs, 1982. WikiArt.
Pretty Pig
An artwork from the National Museum of Ukrainian Folk Decorative Art.PreviousNext
May That Nuclear War Be Cursed!
An important subject of the artist’s works was the struggle between good and evil. It permeates most of Prymachenko’s works, but good always wins.PreviousNext
Spring Revels of Hares and Birds
The works of Prymachenko can be subdivided into thematic, symbolic and ornamental pieces. Her paintings are filled with imaginative details and fantastic creatures.PreviousNext
Blue Ox
Prymachenko’s creatures are beautifully plumed birds and other animals which argue, play music and dine together. She loved colorful, symmetrical depictions of decorative floral arrangements.PreviousNext
Little Shepherds
A landscape painting from the National Museum of Ukrainian Folk Decorative Art.PreviousNext
May I Give This Ukrainian Bread to All People in This Big Wide World
A folk inspired painting by Maria Prymachenko.PreviousNext
Flowers for Peace
A painting by Maria Prymachenko with decorative flowers.PreviousNext
Tiger Laughs
Prymachenko often depicted fantastic creatures, “kind” beasts such as lions and tigers.PreviousNext
Prymachenko never accepted money for her paintings, always giving them to friends and neighbors. She died in 1997.
After the Russian Invasion
On February 25th, 2022, the Ivankiv Historical and Local History Museum in the town of Ivankiv, north of Kyiv, which housed a collection of Prymachenko, was bombarded by Russian troops who invaded Ukraine on February 24th, 2022. According to local sources, on February 27th the building burned to the ground. Besides the museum, the local music school and the House of Culture were damaged as a result of direct fire from Russian tanks.
Luckily, the museum guard, who lived next to the museum, noticed the fire and ran into the burning building to save anything he was able to carry. Thanks to him, 14 out of 25 works of Maria Prymachenko were saved.
I got out of the cellar and got a call that the museum is on fire. Firefighters cannot leave the station. So I ran across the park, hiding. A machine gunner is ahead, a machine gunner is behind me, and I am running. It was the second day of the war, we still didn’t know how to behave. It was later we realized that you can walk if the jacket is unbuttoned and the hands are free. And you can’t run under any circumstances. But when the museum was on fire, I ran.
Nadiya Kostyantynivna Biryuk, head of the culture department of the Ivankiv council.
On February 28th, ICOM-US issued a statement condemning the destruction of the museum, which “illuminates a tangible and irreversible impact of this immoral and unprovoked war”.
In March 2022, Ukraine’s culture minister called on UNESCO to revoke Russia’s membership but the plea was unsuccessful.