I Give You Sunlit Art. Maria Prymachenkoʼs Art Collection Evacuated from the Zaporizhzhya Regional Art Museum
15 October 2024 – 2 March 2025
The visionary art of Maria Prymachenko (1909–1997) has become a legend and an easily recognizable icon of Ukrainian culture. The self-taught creator of folk art is among the most beloved artists of the country, though she received no formal art education. Her likeness has appeared on the country’s coinage and stamps, her works decorate the fairy-tale books, and are featured in animation films. Sixteen Ukrainian memory institutions hold collections of Prymachenko’s art, which is exhibited worldwide. This exhibition presents Maria Prymachenko’s works from the collection evacuated from the Zaporizhzhya Regional Art Museum. It is the first event of this scale by the Ukrainian artist to be held in Lithuania.
Prymachenko produced paintings, ceramics and embroidery. In the 1960s, she started running her own art school. The artist spent six decades of her life in the village of Bolotnya in the Polesia region, where she survived the Holodomor, the Second World War, and the Chernobyl disaster, living to see the Independence of Ukraine. When the Russian aggression against Ukraine destroyed the Museum of Local History in Ivankiv, twenty of Prymachenko’s art pieces were rescued from destruction. Today the calling-for-peace message by Prymachenko’s art rings a prophetic note in the midst of the brutal uproar of the war.
As a creator of folk art, Prymachenko made her debut at the interwar exhibitions in Ukraine. Her appearance at the 1937 Ukrainian Folk Art Exhibition in Paris was truly unforgettable. Her inclination to art was inspired and nurtured by her parents, by their traditional life-style, also the nature, culture and history of her birthplace. Raised in a family of a carpenter and an esteemed folk craftswoman, Maria inherited their creativity. As a child she suffered from polio, an illness that left her confined withing the walls of her home, yet did not shut the door to her professional pursuits. Living a secluded life, she created for herself a spacious world of imagination, populated by real and phantastic creatures, by plants and humans. This world reconciles the rustic peasant mundanity with the artist’s visionary aesthetics with the dramatic 20th-century events, and the phantasies disengaged from reality. Prymachenko’s paintings feature a plethora of metaphors and symbols, of creatures of the ancient Polesia-region-folklore, of legends and mythology, all arranged in ornamental patterns.
In the 1960s, she took to large format work, completely giving up watercolour in favour of gouache. The backside of the painting created in 1968 on the occasion of her 60th birthday carries her first ever dedication. Since then, similar texts, captions, rhymed lines or proverbs often found place on the verso of her paintings. The poet Jurgita Jasponytė has subtly rendered these texts into Lithuanian.
The exhibition features 60 selected compositions in gouache from Maria Prymachenkoʼs collection of 100 works brought to Lithuania. A part of the works created by the artist from 1960 through 1994 have been found in need of restoration and conservation, and currently are at Pranas Gudynas Restoration Centre in Vilnius. The exhibition is accompanied by a programme of animation films, art education activities and lectures.
Ilona Mažeikienė
Exhibition patrons:
The Minister of Culture the Republic of Lithuania Simonas Kairys
Ukrainian Minister of Culture and Strategic Communication Mykola Tochytsky
Project leaders:
Director General of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art Dr Arūnas Gelūnas,
Director of the Zaporizhzhya Regional Art Museum Inga Jankovych
Director General of the Lviv National Borys Voznytsky Art Gallery Taras Vozniak
Exhibition curators: Ilona Mažeikienė, Birutė Pankūnaitė, Skaistė Marčienė, Skaistis Mikulionis
Exhibition designer Marius Žalneravičius
Exhibition architect Austė Kuliešiūtė-Šemetė
Restorers: Eglė Piščikaitė, Paulius Zovė, Rytė Šimaitė, Jurga Blažytė-Denapienė, Janita Petrauskienė, Dalia Jonynaitė
Translators: Jurgita Jasponytė, Irena Jomantienė, Džiulija Elena Fedirkienė, Ruslanas Skrobačas
Language editor Ieva Puluikienė
Exhibition educational programme designers: Rima Povilionytė, Svitlana Matvijenko and Iryna Bila
Exhibition organizers: The Lithuanian National Museum of Art, Zaporizhzhya Regional Art Museum, Lviv National Borys Voznytsky Art Gallery
Institutional partners of the exhibition: Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in Ukraine, Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in the Republic of Poland, Ukrainian Embassy in the Republic of Lithuania, Lithuanian Armed Forces, Lithuanian Riflemen’s Union, Ukrainian Patrol Police, Ukrainian State Boarder Guard Service, Ukrainian State Customs Service, Customs of the Republic of Lithuania
The exhibition is organized in collaboration with the Prymanchenko Family Foundation
General Supporter BTA Baltic Insurance Company
Supporters: UAB AD REM, UAB Bunasta, Customs logistic service, UAB Nova Post Lithuania, Jonas Karolis Chodkevičius Charity and Support Fund
The Lithuanian National Museum extends gratitude to the contributors: Andrey Chernenko, Volodymyr Chornohor, Oleksiy Danilov, Lyubomyr Demianchuk, Valdas Dovydėnas, Robertas Gabulas, Tadas Gečauskas, Rita Grochovskienė, Tomas Ivanauskas, Renata Kanarskaja, Mirijana Kozak, Svitlana Naumenko, Valdemaras Sarapinas, Narimantas Savickas, Elvyra Vasiliauskienė and Agata Voleiko
- Purchase an e-ticket for this exhibition
- Book a guided tour of this exhibition by phone +370 5 243 1138, +370 5 261 6764, email juste.januleviciute@lndm.lt
- Plan your visit to the Vytautas Kasiulis Museum of Art
1 Goštauto st, Vilnius, Lithuania
+370 5 261 6764.
kasiulio.muziejus@lndm.lt
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