Mykola Hlushchenko

Mykola Hlushchenko (Ukrainian: Микола Петрович Глущенко, Russian: Николай Петрович Глущенко; 17 September 1901 in Novomoskovske, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire – 31 October 1977 in Kiev, Ukrainian SSR) was a Ukrainian artist. He was a winner of the Shevchenko National Prize in 1972.

Biography

A graduate of the Academy of Art in Berlin (1924), from 1925 he worked in Paris where he immediately attracted the attention of French critics. From the Neue Sachlichkeit style of his Berlin period he changed to postimpressionism. Besides numerous French, Italian, Dutch, and (later) Ukrainian landscapes, he also painted flowers, still life, nudes, and portraits (such as of Oleksander Dovzhenko and Volodymyr Vynnychenko, as well as portraits commissioned by the Soviet government of the French writers Henri Barbusse, Romen Rolland, and Victor Margueritte and the painter Paul Signac).[1]

At the beginning of the 1930s, Hlushchenko belonged to the Association of Independent Ukrainian Artists and helped organize its large exhibition of Ukrainian, French, and Italian paintings at the National Museum in Lviv.[1] In 1936 he moved to the USSR. Working for the Soviet Union secret service, he was among those who had warned the Soviet government about the German plan to attack ahead of time. In 1944, he moved to Kyiv, and created a series of paintings of the post-war Kyiv, as well as many landscapes he saw while traveling to France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy and other countries.[2]

In the 1960s, having come into close contact with new artistic trends on his trips abroad, he revitalized his paintings with expressive colors, and assumed a leading position among Ukrainian colorist painters. Hlushchenko's work was exhibited in Berlin (1924), Paris (five exhibits 1925–34), Milan (1927), Budapest (1930, 1932), Stockholm (1931), Rome (1933), Lviv (1934, 1935), Moscow (1943, 1959), Belgrade (1966, 1968), London (1966), Toronto (1967–9), and Kiev (over 10 exhibits).[1]

Notes and references

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 'Hlushchenko, Mykola' in Encyclopedia of Ukraine
  2. ↑ Matoshko, A. ‘By Ways of Travels’ in Kyiv Post Jul 23, 2009 online.

Bibliography