Ivan Trush

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Ivan Trush (Ukrainian: Іван Труш, pronounced as Troosh) was a Ukrainian impressionist painter, a master of landscape and portraiture, an art critic, and active community patron of arts in Galicia or Halychyna - a historical region in western Ukraine.

[edit] Life, art, and death

Trush was born in Verkhnye Vysotske, Lviv Oblast in 1869. His studies were undertaken between 1891-1897 at the Krakow Academy of Art under Jan Stanislawski and Leon Wyczolkowski. Trush also studied in Vienna (1894) and in Munich (1897).^[1]

Starting from 1898, Trush lived and worked in Lviv where he became acquainted with Ivan Franko, a poet and writer. In 1899, his first art exhibit was presented to the public in Lviv. It was at this time that Trush became involved with the Shevchenko Scientific Society, for which he completed "a number of works of art, primarily portraits".^[1]

Trush's travels took him to Italy, Egypt, and Palestine. When back at home, Trush founded and organized the first professional art societies in Galicia,^[1] the Society for the Development of Rus' Art (1898), the Society of Friends of Ukrainian Art (1905) and its first exhibition of Ukrainian artists, which drew participation from Kiev-based artists.

The painter's activism, vast and dynamic creative output, numbered over 6,000 works,^[1] inspired a rebirth of painting in Galicia.

Trush died in Lviv in 1941.

[edit] Contributions to arts

Ivan Trush - alongside such figures as ethnographers Volodymyr Hnatyuk, Filaret Kolessa, poet Ivan Franko, the museum's first director Illarion Svientsitsky - played a leading role in the establishment of the Lviv National Museum of Ukrainian Art.^[2]

In his lifetime, Trush created a multitude of portraits of famous Ukrainians. Among these are writers Vasyl Stefanyk and Ivan Franko, poet Lesya Ukrainka, political theorist Mykhailo Drahomanov, composer Mykola Lysenko, and linguist P. Zhytetskyi to name just a few.^[3]

[edit] References