The amazing work and biography of Maria Pryimachenko

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Maria Ovksentievna Primachenko, a master of Ukrainian "naive art", carried through her life a thirst to create, an irresistible need to share her discoveries with people. She is one of those artists who created a unique world of her own images, a world of beauty, skillfully expressed the feelings that live among the people, in their folklore and thoughts.

Childhood of the artist

Bolotnya - the native village of Maria Pryimachenko - is located 80 km from Kyiv. It was here that the artist was born in January 1909. Her father was a carpenter and also carved wood. And her mother was a well-known needlewoman of embroidery: the whole family wore embroidered shirts of her production. Maria's grandmother was also engaged in creative activities - she painted Easter eggs.

The first creative abilities in Maria appeared in early childhood: she was fond of drawing flowers in the sand. And then she began to paint the huts with blue patterns. Firebirds flaunted on the walls of the houses and fantastic flowers bloomed. Fellow villagers liked these drawings, which are solooked beautiful on walls and stoves.

After a while, the future artist began to receive the first orders: neighbors asked to decorate their houses with the same amazing patterns. Even residents of neighboring villages came to admire her work.

Worldview and positive perception of life by the artist

The biography of Maria Primachenko was not without difficult moments in her life. As a child, the artist suffered from a terrible disease - polio, which left its negative reflection on the fate of the craftswoman. Maria moved on crutches all her life. This fact influenced the painting style of the author. Unbearable physical pain, combined with unbridled creative imagination and the desire for life, resulted in bizarre images. Now it is called art therapy. The confrontation between joy and pain, good and evil, darkness and light can be seen in every painting by Maria Pryimachenko.

The artist had a rather strict character, but she was friendly to people. Sometimes Pryimachenko gave paintings to the guests of her house. For Mary, there were two worlds. Everyone lived in the first, and the second, internal, belonged only to her.

Her world was filled with various fantastic creatures, marvelous birds sang here, fish learned to fly, rainbow cows with human eyes grazed in the meadow, and a kind brave lion was a protector from enemies.

The beginning of Maria Primachenko's work

The artist has become famous since 1936, when for the first time in Kyiv at the All-Ukrainian Exhibition of Folk Art her works “Beasts from the Swamp” were exhibited. Maria was awarded a diploma of the 1st degree. Here she began to get involved in ceramics and continued to embroider and draw. In particular, she wrote a number of wonderful paintings: “A bull for a walk”, “Blue Lion”, “Piebald Beast”, “The Beast in Red Boots” 1936-1937, “Donkey”, “Sheep”, “Red Berries”, “Monkeys are dancing”, “Two parrots”, etc. (1937-1940).

The images of these works amaze with their fabulousness, magic and fantasy. They are based on folklore legends, stories from life and folk tales. Reality and fiction intertwined in her works. Animals, flowers and trees are endowed with the ability to talk, they fight for good and resist evil - everything is like in a fairy tale.

Birds also have fabulous properties: she has bizarre shapes, intricate outlines that resemble a flower, and wings are decorated with embroidery. All the animals and birds in Mary are sunny, colorful, pleasing to the eye with their positivity ("The elephant wanted to be a sailor", "A young bear walks through the forest and does no harm to people").

Creativity in the war and post-war periods

During the war, Maria Primachenko interrupts her creative activities and returns to her native village. Here she experienced the terrible years of her life. The war took away her husband, who was unable to see his son. In the post-war period, the artist constantly lives in Bolotna, turning her parents' house into a workshop. The year 1950 is dated to the panel embroidered by her "Pavas in grapes" on a blue background, on a brown "Two apple trees", as well as paintings: "Two hoopoes inflowers”, “Ukrainian flowers”. In 1953-1959, the drawings of Maria Pryimachenko "Puss in Boots", "Peacock", "Crane and Fox", "Shepherds" became famous. These works testify to the improvement of Primachenko's figurative manner.

Creativity of the 70-80s

A special flowering of her work falls on the beginning of the 70s. If earlier the artist depicted real animals, then in the 70-80s. fantastic animals appear in her works, which do not exist in reality. This is a four-headed ancient swamp animal, and swamp crayfish, and Horun, and Prus, and wild humpback, and wild volezakh. She motivated the name of the wild chaplun with the word "chapati". Emphasis is placed on the paws of the beast, which can wade through alder thickets. There are animals purple, black, blue; sad, funny, smiling, surprised. There are animals with human faces. Allegory animals are evil. So, a purple beast in a "bourgeois" cap, painted with stylized bombs, maliciously grinned, showing sharp teeth and a long predatory tongue ("Damn the war! Bombs grow instead of flowers", 1984).

Style Features

The artist's works are a combination of all possible artistic styles of the twentieth century: impressionism, neo-romanticism, expressionism. One of Maria Pryimachenko's favorite topics, which she often turned to, is space. She loved the starry sky and inhabited it with her winged creatures - the hunchback, mermaids, birds. Even on the moon, she planted vegetable gardens, nurturing hermagical dreams. Her wonderful world was magical and unique, unique and radiant, sincere and kind, like herself.

The work of a folk artist teaches people to notice beauty in everything. She sought to show each person individually how important it is to remain children even in old age, to maintain the ability to be surprised and to see a lively interest in everything that happens around. The works of Maria Pryimachenko really bring us back to childhood. There is nothing superfluous on them, we see only the irrepressible fantasy of a woman with an amazing soul, with folk energy displayed in the pictures.

When Maria was asked why she draws non-existent animals and flowers, she answered: “Why draw as they are, they are already so beautiful, and I draw mine for the joy of people. I really want more people to watch the drawings and for everyone to like it.”

Artist genius

The world of art has opened the amazing work of Maria Primachenko at least twice. The first time the artist gained popularity in 1935 as part of a talent search campaign among the people. Then the work of a rural craftswoman attracted the attention of the metropolitan needlewoman Tatyana Flora, who collected masterpieces of folk art for an exhibition. As a result, the artist successfully works in Kyiv experimental workshops. The talent of the artist contributed to the fact that she mastered the skills of modeling and painting clay products.

Artist's work quicklybegan to gain popularity abroad. Visitors of Moscow, Prague, Montreal, Warsaw and other European exhibitions could get acquainted with amazing animals. Art connoisseurs were shown drawings by Maria Pryimachenko "Two Parrots", "Black Beast", "Dog in a Cap", "Beast in Red Boots", "Bull on a Walk", "Red Berries".

The world exhibition of Maria Pryimachenko, which took place in Paris, brought great fame to the Ukrainian artist, for which she was awarded a gold medal. It was in the French capital that venerable colleagues such as Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall first got acquainted with the works of the artist. They appreciated her work and even began to use similar motifs for their works.

The second time the talent of a folk artist was discovered in the 60s. This was facilitated by the famous art critic and playwright Grigory Mestechkin, as well as journalist Yuri Rost. An article about the work of Maria Primachenko, which was published by a journalist in the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, made her popular again.

Death of an artist

At the age of 89, an outstanding artist died. But, fortunately, the family of Pryimachenko-artists continued. Her best student was her son - Fedor, now an honored artist of Ukraine. Her grandchildren, Peter and John, also went her way. Today they are young, talented artists, each with a bright personality. Growing up next to masters like their grandmother and father,they have adopted all the best.

Perpetuating the memory of Maria Primachenko

The small planet 14624 Primachenko was named after the craftswoman. This name was suggested by Klim Churyumov. In honor of the famous artist, a commemorative coin was issued in 2008. A year later, in Kyiv, Likhachev Boulevard was renamed Maria Pryimachenko Boulevard. The cities of Brovary, Sumy and Kramatorsk have streets named after Maria Primachenko.