Halyna Sylvestrivna Sevruk ( uk, Галина Сильвестрівна Севрук, ) (18 May 1929 – 13 February 2022) was a Ukrainian artist who was particularly notable for her ceramics and mosaics. Her art often incorporated themes related to Ukrainian history and culture. She was a member of the Ukrainian
Sixtiers
The Sixtiers (Russian: Шестидесятники, romanized: ''Shestidesyatniki'', Ukrainian: Шістдесятники, romanized: ''Shistdesiatnyky''; "people of the 60s") were representatives of а new generation of the Soviet Intelligen ...
, a dissident movement of intellectuals within the Soviet Union in the 1960s.
Early years
Sevruk was born on 18 May 1929 in
Samarkand
fa, سمرقند
, native_name_lang =
, settlement_type = City
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from the top:Registan square, Shah-i-Zinda necropolis, Bibi-Khanym Mosque, view inside Shah-i-Zinda, ...
,
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan (, ; uz, Ozbekiston, italic=yes / , ; russian: Узбекистан), officially the Republic of Uzbekistan ( uz, Ozbekiston Respublikasi, italic=yes / ; russian: Республика Узбекистан), is a doubly landlocked cou ...
. As a result of forced emigration, her parents had been in Samarkand starting in 1920. Her father, Sylvestr Martynovych Sevruk, was an architect, and came from a Polish family. Her mother Iryna Dmytrivna (née Hryhorovych-Barska) was Ukrainian, and was related to the noted architect
Ivan Hryhorovych-Barskyi
Ivan Grigorovich-BarskyBrumfield, William Craft: Gold in azure: one thousand years of Russian architecture. D.R. Godine, 1983. P. 20. or Ivan Hryhorovych-Barskyi (russian: Иван Григорьевич Григорович-Барский, ) (bo ...
. The year after Halyna Sevruk's birth, the family moved to
Kharkiv
Kharkiv ( uk, wikt:Харків, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city and List of hromadas of Ukraine, municipality in Ukraine.Kyiv
Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the List of European cities by populat ...
.
Career
Sevruk began her artistic training by studying painting with the artist Hryhorii Svitlytskyi. She later recalled these years fondly, and noted that the experience shaped her commitment to being a "true artist".
From 1947 to 1949, Sevruk attended the Shevchenko Art School, located in Kyiv, where she studied with Yurii Kyianchenko. In 1952, she began attending the Kyiv State Art Institute, graduating in 1959. She later observed that the instruction she received from the faculty at the Art Institute, which included renowned artists like Viktor Puzyrkov, did not match her personal artistic aspirations.
In the 1960s, she worked as a decorator of buildings for the Art Fund. She developed a sense for incorporating elements of Ukrainian art, history, language and literature into her art. She joined the Club of Creative Youth in Kyiv, founded by
Les Tanyuk
Leonid (Les) Stepanovych Tanyuk ( uk, Леонід (Лесь) Танюк, August 7, 1938 – March 18, 2016
In 1963, she completed "The Forest Song", the first of several mosaic pieces she would make. Another mosaic, entitled "Lily", was exhibited in 1964. In the same year, she also took up ceramics, a pursuit that would produce some of her better-known works. She created monumental ceramic artwork for installation in institutions, such as the Chorne More Hotel in
Odesa
Odesa (also spelled Odessa) is the third most populous city and municipality in Ukraine and a major seaport and transport hub located in the south-west of the country, on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. The city is also the administrative ...
, and the Khmilnyk Sanatorium.
Sevruk started illustrating in ink, beginning in the late 1960s. Her illustrations appeared in several books of poetry, including a translated book of poetry by
Federico Garcia Lorca Federico (; ) is a given name and surname. It is a form of Frederick, most commonly found in Spanish, Portuguese and Italian.
People with the given name Federico
Artists
* Federico Ágreda, Venezuelan composer and DJ.
* Federico Aguilar Alcuaz, ...
. In 1968, she signed the Letter of 139, a letter from intellectuals opposing the reversal of the policies of destalinization and the persecution of some fellow artists. In response, she was expelled from the
Union of Artists of Ukraine
Union commonly refers to:
* Trade union, an organization of workers
* Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets
Union may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment
Music
* Union (band), an American rock group
** ''Un ...
. Two fellow artists,
Alla Horska
Alla Horska ( uk, Алла Горська; 18 September 1929, Yalta — 17 November 1970, Vasylkiv) was a Ukrainian artist of the 1960s, Monumentalism, monumentalist painter, one of the first representatives of the Ukrainian underground, und ...
and
Liuda Semykina
Liudmyla Nikolaevna Semykina ( uk, Людмила Миколаївна Семикіна) (23 August 1924 – 12 January 2021) was an artist and painter from Odesa, Ukraine, and an Honored Artist of Ukraine
Merited (Performing) Artist of Ukrain ...
, were also expelled. Nine other artists who had signed the letter later "confessed" and thus avoided punishment. Sevruk's studio was closed, and for many years, she was prevented from exhibiting; her works were not welcomed into museums, galleries or exhibition halls. Sevruk was reinstated to the Union over 20 years later, in 1989.
In the 1970s Sevruk experimented with different materials in her ceramics and continued to draw inspiration from folk elements and fairytales. She produced a number of paintings with a new artistic manner, many of which were tributes to people in her social circles. In 1970, she created a monumental
stele
A stele ( ),Anglicized plural steles ( ); Greek plural stelai ( ), from Greek , ''stēlē''. The Greek plural is written , ''stēlai'', but this is only rarely encountered in English. or occasionally stela (plural ''stelas'' or ''stelæ''), whe ...
from reinforced concrete titled "The Tree of Life". This was destroyed as it did not comply with the official aesthetic standards. In 1984, after years of being unable to exhibit because of her political views, Sevruk held her first solo exhibition. The show was held at the Hryhorii Svitlytskyi Memorial House-Museum, at the home of her old teacher in Kyiv. In 1987, she had a second solo exhibition at the Museum of Podil.
Personal life and death
Sevruk died on 13 February 2022, at the age of 92.
Awards and recognition
She was awarded the
Andrey Sheptytsky
Andrey Sheptytsky, OSBM (; uk, Митрополит Андрей Шептицький; 29 July 1865 – 1 November 1944) was the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church from 1901 until his death in 1944. His tenure spann ...
Art Prize in 1994. The award is named in honor of a former Metropolitan of the Greek Catholic Church who was an art aficionado.
Her art is on display at the Sixtier Museum in
Kyiv
Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the List of European cities by populat ...