Maria Prymachenko
In times of colossal destruction of Ukrainians, in times when there was famine and repression, heaven gives an artist who shows Ukrainian strength, Ukrainian aesthetics, Ukrainian beauty, joy and goodness, against the background of destruction and ashes.
The artist Maria Prymachenko was born on December 30, 1908 in the village of Bolotnia in the Kyiv region, where she spent her entire life. Maria’s childhood was overshadowed by the terrible illness of poliomyelitis, which made her serious and observant, sharpened her hearing and vision, Maria bravely endured all the vicissitudes of life, knew the happiness of love, although her husband died at the front and the happiness of motherhood, her son Fedir is also a People’s Artist of Ukraine . The special flowering of her creativity falls on the 1970s.
Her works are a constant success, exhibited at exhibitions in Paris, Warsaw, Sofia, Montreal and Prague.
What was her unique talent? A unique phenomenon of Maria Priymachenko?
Her manner of writing can be explained only under one condition, if we delve into the worldview of her deep and distant ancestors, the worldview of the Polish Ukrainian land, her work is Ukraine, her work is a unique synthesis of the beautiful and the ugly. At first glance, her work speaks of goodness. Maria Pryimachenko said that evil is elusive, it is very difficult to see, and good is open, that is why there are so many flowers, so many animals, and birds in her works. If we raise our children on the legacy of Maria Prymachenko, they will really blossom, and flowers are her favorite genre. All of Maria’s work is to manifest joy. But it is worth thinking about the times in which Maria Pryimachenko lived, whether there were reasons for this joy. Maria is the same age as Stepan Bendera, imagine the different fates, the completely different ways to express one’s identity and how cool it is that the world is so polyphonic, that someone can actively fight politically and someone can paint strange animals. Moreover, these animals can sometimes cause disgust, they are not always pleasant to look at. I would like you to understand that Maria Priymachenko never saw those animals, sometimes she just dreamed of them, and then in the morning she got up and drew them, reproduced them on paper. This is a manifestation of the human subconscious, imagination, fantasy, which is involved in the very deep beliefs of our world people.
Maria Prymachenko is a representative of Polissia.
The village of Bolotne, where she was born, is included in the 30 km zone of the Chernobyl exclusion zone. In 1971, she painted her picture, where she depicted four graves, and in the center of those graves are hot suns like the four reactors that were at the Chornobyl NPP. That is, it can be said that she predicted the disaster long before it happened. Unfortunately, some paintings were stolen from her house.
Maria did not study anywhere, her talent was a gift from God. She was invited to the Kyiv workshops in 1935, when the country was reeling under Stalin’s terror. It was then that she discovered her talent. Maria was from such a type of people that it was impossible to teach or relearn her, she lived and created from her own root from the magma of the earth. Her works can be considered naive art, but few have investigated what we can see behind these symbols and what associations it causes. Someone may admire her works, someone may simply admit that she is a talent, but the fact that these works have a very powerful energy is a fact.
Maria did not have any special drawing technique and technique of using material, she drew on Whatman paper, used gouache and watercolor, used ordinary industrial brushes, sometimes made of cat hair, first made an outline with a pencil and then put strokes of her subconscious, not just her own, but the Ukrainian subconscious, especially its color contrast is impressive.
Her paintings will forever remain in our hearts… Even now that she is gone, she helps us a lot, recently her painting was bought for 500,000 US dollars, all the money withdrawn from the sale was directed to the purchase of 125 buses for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.