Mykola Burachek

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The broad Dnieper roars and moans by Mykola Burachek, 1941

Mykola Burachek (or Buraček, Ukrainian: Микола Бурачек) (b. March 16, 1871, Letychiv, Podillia Guberniya (now Khmelnytskyi Oblast)- d. August 12, 1942, Kharkiv) was a Ukrainian Impressionist painter and pedagogue.

Burachek studied in Kiev School of Drawing (late 1890s) and from Jan Stanisławski at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts (1905 - 1910). He also studied at Paris in the studio of Henri Matisse (1910 - 1911). His first exhibition was in 1907.

In 1917–1922 he taught at the Ukrainian State Academy of Arts in Kiev and then at the Kiev State Art Institute and the Lysenko Music and Drama School in Kiev. Then he moved to Kharkiv and became the rector of the Kharkiv Art Institute (1925). In 1934 he returned to Kiev and taught at the Kiev State Art Institute.

Burachek also worked for theaters as a stage designer. In 1934 he worked for the Kharkiv theaters designing stages for the plays Marusia Churai by Ivan Mykytenko and Set Your Heart Free by Marko Kropyvnytsky. In 1937 he worked with Donetsk theaters.

A virtuoso landscape painter, he painted Impressionist landscapes devoted to the Ukrainian themes such as Morning on the Dnieper (1934), Apple Trees in Bloom (1936), and The Broad Dnieper Roars and Moans (1941).

In 2004 Ukrainian post issued a stamp based on the Burachek's 1919 painting of St. Michael's Golden-Domed Cathedral.

[edit] Writings

Burachek also worked as a writer and art historian, among his works are:

Moie zhyttia (My Life, 1937),
Velykyi narodnyi khudozhnyk (The Great National Artist, 1939), a monograph on Taras Shevchenko),
Essays about Oleksander Murashko, Mykola Samokysh , Serhii Vasylkivsky, Mykhailo Zhuk, and other artists.