Maria Avksentievna Primachenko (Ukrainian: Maria Oksentiivna Primachenko, sometimes Priymachenko; December 30, 1908 (January 12), 1909 - August 18, 1997) - Ukrainian folk artist. People's Artist of the Ukrainian SSR (1988). Representative of “folk primitiveness” (“naive art”).
M. A. Primachenko was born on December 30, 1908 (January 12), 1909 in the village of Bolotnya (now Ivankovsky district, Kyiv region of Ukraine), where she spent her whole life.
Father, Avksentiy Grigorievich, was a virtuoso carpenter who made yard fences.
Mother, Praskovya Vasilyevna, was a recognized master of embroidery (Maria Avksentyevna herself dressed in hand-embroidered shirts).
Maria Avksentyevna's childhood was overshadowed by a terrible illness - polio. This made her more than childishly serious and observant, and sharpened her hearing and vision. Maria Avksentyevna endured all the hardships of life with dignity and bravery, including the death of her husband at the front. And her son, Fyodor Vasilyevich Primachenko (1941-2008), was her student and was a People's Artist of Ukraine.
“It all started like this,” the artist recalled. - Once near the hut, by the river, in a meadow decorated with flowers, I was tending geese. On the sand I drew all sorts of flowers that I saw. And then I noticed bluish clay. I put it in the hem and painted our hut...” Everyone came to look at this wonder made by the girl’s hands. They praised. Neighbors asked to decorate their houses too.
Primachenko’s talent was discovered by Kiev resident Tatyana Flora (in the 1960-1970s, journalist G. A. Mestechkin organized wide popularization of Primachenko’s work). In 1936, Maria Avksentyevna was invited to the experimental workshops at the Kiev Museum of Ukrainian Art. Her creativity became more diverse - Maria painted, embroidered, and became interested in ceramics. Her ceramic jugs and dishes from this period are kept in the State Museum of Ukrainian Folk and Decorative Arts. Akim Gerasimenko, a recognized master of Ukrainian ceramics, willingly handed over to Primachenko the products of various shapes he had made, and she painted them with images of red foxes, scary animals, blue monkeys walking on strawberry stems, or green crocodiles covered with flowers.
There is also information that Maria Primachenko showed her talent in the field of ceramic sculpture. Only one work in this genre has survived - “Crocodile”. For participation in the 1936 folk art exhibition, Primachenko was awarded a first degree diploma. Subsequently, her works were exhibited with constant success at exhibitions in Paris, Warsaw, Sofia, Montreal, and Prague. In 1986 she created her Chernobyl series of paintings.
By decision of the Kyiv City Council No. 13/1068 dated January 22, 2009, the capital’s Likhachev Boulevard was renamed in honor of Maria Primachenko.
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Looking at the works of Maria Primachenko, I remember the words from the song sung by Boris Grebenshchikov: “and in that city there is a garden - all herbs and flowers, animals of unprecedented beauty walk there.” The wondrous, fabulously beautiful characters of this artist are unmistakably recognized by anyone who has ever seen her work. The exhibition at the Kiev Center for Contemporary Art “M 17” presents 39 paintings from private collections - “The Amazing World of Maria Primachenko”. The fantastic exhibition is complemented by works by the son and grandchildren of Maria Primachenko, as well as sculptures by Oleg Pinchuk.
Maria Primachenko “Wild Sheep”, 1989. Paper, gouache. Private collection
“I paint sunny flowers because I love people, I create for the joy and happiness of people, so that all nations love each other, so that they live like flowers all over the earth...”
Maria Primachenko
Maria Avksentievna Primachenko. Kochubarki planted poppies
1983
Maria Primachenko (1908−1997) - representative of naive art, people's artist of Ukraine. She was born in the village of Bolotnya near Kiev, where she spent her entire life, almost never leaving. Due to polio suffered in childhood, Maria remained lame for the rest of her life. The girl drew from the age of eight, embroidered (like her mother, a well-known embroiderer throughout the area), did sewing and painted huts. At first, she painted the walls of her father’s house, and when the neighbors saw the elegant hut, decorated with bright flowers, they began to invite her to paint “such beauty.”
Maria Avksentievna Primachenko. Goby
1986
Mytho-poetic perception of the world underlies folk art and creativity of Maria Primachenko. The words of the artist herself speak about the lyrical nature and the sources of her inspiration: “The Swamp entered me like a stork on the roof, my mother’s embroidery, a sad girl’s song, the morning fog... But there is no end to it, my Swamp, and it seems to me that in every tree, in every drop of rain, not only the Swamp, but my whole homeland, voices of distant people, songs I don’t know...".
Maria Avksentievna Primachenko. Dancer (Dancer)
1980
As an artist, Maria Prymachenko was “discovered” in 1936 during a search for folk talent and was invited to the Kyiv workshops at the Museum of Ukrainian Art. These classes were the only professional education in the artist’s life. However, this did not stop her from becoming famous all over the world.
In 1937, at the World Exhibition in Paris, the artist was awarded a gold medal. Her works were exhibited in Warsaw, Sofia, Montreal, Prague, and at republican exhibitions in the Soviet Union.
1992
Maria Avksentievna Primachenko. Kradun
1940
Maria Avksentievna Primachenko. Pea stuffed animal on eight legs
1990
In her works, Primachenko depicted magical animals, birds, flowers and scenes from rural life. The artist had never seen many animals and painted them using her imagination and boundless imagination. When they asked her what kind of miracle-yudo this was, pointing to some mythical beast, they heard the answer: “This is what animals looked like before our era”.
Maria was even advised never to go to the zoo in order to preserve the fairytale quality in her works. Primachenko first learned what her favorite characters really looked like only in the 1970s, when Sergei Parajanov invited the artist to the circus and took her to a performance in Kyiv.
Maria Avksentievna Primachenko. Wild bear
1989
Maria Avksentievna Primachenko. Monkey
1991
Primachenko's drawings combine with amazing artistic power sonorous pure color, internal dynamics, folk decorative motifs, along with extraordinary expression and incredible emotional power of images. Birds with embroidered wings and exotic animals in floral patterns. Why is the Garden of Eden not an idyll?
Maria Avksentievna Primachenko. Beast with a long neck
1970
Maria Avksentievna Primachenko. Beast
1983
The names of Primachenko’s paintings are also original - the perky rhyming sayings composed by the artist reveal the character of the character or describe a mythical plot.
Maria Avksentievna Primachenko. Born Oloyan in the city, nowhere and still
1978
Maria Avksentievna Primachenko. This beast has its mouth open and wants to feast on a flower, but its tongue is thin
1985
Maria Avksentievna Primachenko. A leftist walks across the field without tiring. Marvel in order to profit
1989
Maria Primachenko became the founder of a dynasty of artists. She taught her only son, Fyodor (1941−2008), and grandchildren, Ivan and Peter, to draw. Their works are presented at the exhibition.
Work by Ivan Primachenko. Untitled
Fedor Primachenko “Song of Spring”, 1997
The exhibition presents works by Maria Primachenko from the private collection of Ukrainian sculptor Oleg Pinchuk, director of the M 17 center.
Kiev sculptor Oleg Pinchuk collects works by Maria Primachenko and calls her his favorite artist. His collection includes several dozen works by the master, some of which are presented at the current exhibition. Among them is the work “Ukrainian Sunflower”, depicted on the commemorative coin from the “Outstanding Figures of Ukraine” series, which was issued in 2008 in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Maria Prymachenko.
Maria Primachenko. "Ukrainian sunflower. Let people bring joy and happiness to every home, so that there will be peace throughout the whole earth."
Oleg Pinchuk was the initiator of several exhibitions of Maria Primachenko and has repeatedly stated that he intends to “to force the world to recognize our genius. I want Maria Primachenko’s contribution to art to be comparable to Niko Pirosmani’s contribution and adequately appreciated in the eyes of society.”.
Oleg Pinchuk is a famous Ukrainian sculptor. He studied at the National Academy of Art in Kyiv and the Higher School of Visual Arts in Geneva. His works are kept in many museum collections: in the collections of the Vienna Museum of Art History, the Cartier jewelry company in Geneva, Espace Pierre Cardin in Paris, the Riga Museum of Foreign Collections, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the National Museum of the History of Ukraine and other museums and private collections.
Oleg Pinchuk. Bird of Happiness II. year 2013. Photo: M 17 website
Primachenko’s work is close to the artistic fantasies of the sculptor himself - his mythical works also come from the world of fantasy and surrealism.
Works by Oleg Pinchuk at the exhibition “The Amazing World of Maria Primachenko”
A large-scale art project is associated with the name of Maria Primachenko. In honor of the 100th anniversary of the artist’s birth, a boulevard in Kyiv was named after her, and in 2017, the Prima Maria Art Boulevard project was approved to create a kind of open-air museum. As part of the project, 16 thematic park sculptures based on her works, three stylized arches, mosaic panels, art benches, two sculptural compositions at the entrance, and murals on houses and office buildings located on the boulevard will be created on Maria Primachenko Boulevard. Sculptors Konstantin Skritutsky and Fyodor Balandin, the creators of the Kyiv Landscape Alley, are working on the decoration. The project is planned to be implemented over three years.
The first step has already been taken. In October 2017, the first art installation as part of this project appeared on Maria Primachenko Boulevard. Now taking a photo with a lion in the morning is considered a good omen, and a good mood for the whole day is guaranteed.
Anastasia Primachenko is the artist’s great-granddaughter at the installation. Photo: Prima Maria Art Boulevard project page on Facebook
The exhibition “The Amazing World of Maria Primachenko” at the M 17 center will last until December 3, 2017.
Primitivism is the art of people who have not lost the child within them
UNESCO declared 2009 the year of the Ukrainian artist, who worked all her life in the village of Bolotnya near Kiev. In world art, Primachenko’s name stands next to Matisse, Modigliani, Van Gogh, Pirosmani... But she painted wonder animals like a child. But she did it brilliantly...
Maria's childhood was marred by polio. This made her more serious and observant than a child, and sharpened her hearing and vision. All objects surrounding the girl became participants in a lively exciting game, sometimes sad, but more often bright and festive.
“I make sunny flowers because I love people, I create for the joy and happiness of people, so that all nations love each other, so that they live like flowers throughout the whole earth...” - this is what the original artist said about herself.
Maria Primachenko invented fantastic animals. Her “Animal Series” has no analogues either in Ukrainian or in world art.
Despite her difficult fate (the artist walked with a crutch from the age of nine, and her husband was taken away by the war), Maria Primachenko remained a tireless dreamer and cheerful inventor all her life. Her fellow villagers loved her and she had quite a lot of friends. “There are probably at least 300 paintings scattered in her native village of Bolotnya,” says Natalia Zabolotnaya, “she generously gave pieces of her world to everyone.”
This year, Ukraine and the entire art world are celebrating the 100th anniversary of Maria Prymachenko. Viktor Yushchenko signed a special decree, which lists a number of events including the creation of a museum and the renaming of one of the streets of the capital in honor of the artist. How did the modest grandmother from the village of Bolotnya deserve such honors?
We asked her fellow artists who were personally acquainted with Primachenko to remember the great primitivist artist.
“I kept pigs, chickens, geese... That’s what I lived on.”
“I met Maria Avksentyevna 15 years ago, when I came for her 85th birthday,” says a longtime fan of her work, academician of painting, famous Kiev artist Vasily Gurin.
Of course, I knew her work, because Primachenko’s paintings appeared on purchases at the Union of Artists. This name was already well known to our classics, including Tatyana Yablonskaya. Her son Fedor brought the work to Kyiv. He followed in his mother's footsteps - he also mastered the folk primitive. They bought these works inexpensively back then; they believed that amateur art could not cost more than 300 rubles.
When we arrived for her anniversary, I was amazed that this brilliant woman lived in a simple rural hut under a thatched roof. There is a huge farm in the yard. She kept pigs, chickens, geese. They even had their own horse! This is how the family lived.
When we became close, Maria Avksentyevna confessed: “All the women in the village laughed at me. I go, they say, God knows how. And when the collective farms came, they began to complain that I was sitting all day on the collective farm and drawing, instead of working out my workdays.” So before her fame, she lived hard. But then even high-ranking people became interested in her: the first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine Vladimir Shcherbitsky, Nikolai Zhulinsky (ex-Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine - Ed.). The latter began to enter the house. On her behalf, he also came to the Union of Artists together with the poet Les Tanyuk. They organized her anniversary together with the Union. It was a holiday for the whole village!
Those women who once said that she was a parasite came first. They put on elegant embroidered shirts and festive scarves. An orchestra played under the house all day long. Everyone then wanted to see her, but she hid in the back room. When I entered, I was amazed at how small she seemed on the big bed, and her works were hanging on the walls all around. He came closer and was stunned: just like my mother Varvara!
Primachenko was very charming, but contrasting - there was a smile of joy on her face and then sadness. I immediately wanted to draw her. And later, at the Union of Artists, we organized an exhibition of works by the entire Primachenko dynasty.
It was thanks to Primachenko that a telephone was installed in Bolotnya and a sewer system was installed. And when Maria was buried (at the local cemetery), the procession stretched for a kilometer - from the house to the churchyard itself...
“I drove the vodka myself”
“I came to see her several times,” recalls Anatoly Melnik, director of the National Art Museum.
Mrs. Maria gave the impression of a very cordial, hospitable person. She loved to sit at the table and pour her friends 50 grams of vodka, which she brewed herself.
At that time I was engaged in the formation of the collection of the Khmelnytsky Museum of Contemporary Art. So she gave us 24 works in exchange for paper and gouache. She loved to donate her works to museums. I was amazed that in one of the paintings she wrote: “The world has existed for a billion years, but there has never been such a monkey”...
Indeed, Maria Primachenko knew how to create what Nature itself could not create.
Reference
Maria Primachenko was born in the village of Bolotnya, Ivankovsky district, Kyiv region. According to her passport, her birthday is December 31, 1908, but she herself said that she was born on the old New Year, on Vasily, in 1909.
In the 30s, while searching for nuggets from the people, young Primachenko was noticed by Kiev artist Tatyana Flor. In 1936, she was invited to the experimental workshops at the Kiev Museum of Ukrainian Decorative Arts. There she completed her first internship, where she learned to sculpt and paint clay products.
Maria gave birth to her only son, Fyodor, who, like his mother, became a national artist. And during the Great Patriotic War she lost her husband. After the war, Maria was forgotten for several decades, only in the 60s she was rediscovered by art critic and film playwright Grigory Mestechkin and Moscow journalist Yuri Rost (a native of Kyiv), whose article about Maria Primachenko in Komsomolskaya Pravda made her famous.
During her lifetime, the artist was awarded the title of Honored Artist, and in 1966 she became a laureate of the State Prize named after Taras Shevchenko. Today her works are kept in private collections and museums around the world.
5 little-known facts from Primachenko’s life
- Her mother Paraska was a recognized master of embroidery and passed on her gift to her daughter, who until her last days wore shirts sewn and decorated with her own hands. Father Avksentiy was a virtuoso carpenter. In the village he made yard fences in the form of ancient Slavic images.
- Maria was born a very beautiful girl, but with a terrible disease - polio. Disabled since childhood (one leg almost didn’t work, which is why she underwent three operations, wore a 7-kilogram prosthesis all her life and walked with a stick), she was distinguished by her seriousness and attentiveness.
- The young artist painted her first paintings on the sand. Then I found colored clay and painted the hut. The whole village came to look at this miracle, and then fellow villagers asked to decorate their houses too.
- In August 2006, 100 of Primachenko’s paintings were stolen from her son’s house. Each of the stolen paintings, according to the most conservative estimate, was then worth $5-6 thousand. Fedor was hospitalized with an acute nervous breakdown. The police immediately found out that the crime was committed with the participation of local residents. The robbers entered through the neighboring yard and knew their way around the house well. As it turned out, a domestic collector ordered the theft. The paintings were soon found.
- In the "World Encyclopedia of Naive Art" Maria Primachenko is on a par with such masters as Matisse and Modigliani. The Ukrainian artist is named the brightest representative of this style.
She was acutely aware of her Ukrainianness, but when someone tried to clumsily push it out, she “began to act.” She was a humanist and emphasized that she did not care what faith a person was (precisely faith, not nationality), which was ten times more correct.
For me, even today, it represents the whole world: closed and common - the one in which we all live. What is striking about her is that she was an illiterate rural woman and at the same time a fantastic, profound philosopher of our time, a morally educated person. She expressed with her brush what she could not express...
“It all started like this,” the artist recalled. “One day near the house, above the river in a colorful meadow, I was grazing geese. I drew all sorts of flowers that I saw in the sand, and then I noticed bluish silt. I collected it in the hem and painted our house...” . Everyone came to look at this wonder made by the girl’s hands. They praised. Neighbors asked us to decorate their houses too. They were surprised and advised me to study
People's artistMaria Primachenko with her creativity opened an original page in the original art of world culture. Her exhibitions were exhibited with great success in France, Canada, Poland, Russia, Germany and many other countries of the world. In 1937, at the world exhibition in Paris, Maria Primachenko received a gold medal, surprising the artistic world with her paintings... In all catalogs and articles about this event, they remember that Picasso himself gasped and groaned in delight in front of her works. Director S. Parajanov often came to her, enchanted by her paintings and Maria herself, and when the opportunity presented itself, he gave her gifts. Once, in an era of total shortage, he gave her a huge box of oranges, which Maria had never even seen before. She simply admired them. She said that they were like suns, as if they had come out of her paintings.
Once, back in Soviet times, bosses from the Union of Artists of Ukraine came to Primachenko on the Volga - in nylon T-shirts, plastic mesh hats, leather sandals and with briefcases in their hands - They brought a Certificate of Honor for the exhibition and three carnations. They come in, knock, and at this time Maria is standing on the table, having picked up her skirt and leaning on a crutch with one hand, and with the other she is whitewashing the ceiling of the hut with blue lime... “Get back!” - I had to unkindly ask the guests to leave urgently. “It’s a shame, Lord, it’s embarrassing, what kind of look we found, I’m now, in an instant...” And it happened instantly: I wasn’t afraid - I jumped onto the floor with that same crutch and a wet brush - I felt so embarrassed for my sloppy appearance and especially for a crippled leg peeking out from under a colorful calico.
Until she changed her clothes and put herself in order, she kept the guests on the veranda and did not let them into the room. Then she set the table and treated the people of Kiev to cherry liqueur, a can of “Bulls in Tomato” that she had hidden for just such an occasion, and scrambled eggs from the Bolotnyansk “kochubarka” (the artist called the heroines of her paintings - chickens - “kochubarkas.”). I received this very letter, but when I took three red carnations in my hands, I didn’t know what to say due to the inconvenience and lack of understanding by the bosses of the “moment” - it was the zenith, the crown of summer: “Damn, but why are you, really?.. Probably they bought it from a greenhouse? - it’s summer in our village, the fertile linden tree is blooming, singing, blooming - it’s just asking for a picture, everything is so lush, lush, and beautiful... Lord, glory to You..."
“I make sunny flowers because I love people, I create for the joy and happiness of people, so that all nations love each other, so that they live like flowers all over the earth...” - That's what the original artist said.
Having studied at school for only four years, she, apparently, would have disappeared into obscurity, but in the 30s the party issued a cry - to look for folk nuggets. Primachenko was found and taught for a year in Kiev. They say that her teacher did not let the girl into the zoo - I was afraid that the real lions and monkeys seen there would harm the animals that were born in the artist’s fantasies.
When the war began, Maria Priymachenko returned to her native village, sharing with her fellow villagers the difficulties of the occupation and the joy of victory. The war took her husband from her, who never had time to see her son Fyodor, but did not break the creative spirit of the craftswoman.
Then there were many years of oblivion. In the 60s, she was remembered again - followed by signs of recognition - the Order of the Badge of Honor, the title of laureate of the Shevchenko Prize.
And her worldwide recognition is evidenced by the fact that it is her work that appears on the cover of the “World Encyclopedia of Naive Art,” where she herself is presented as a star of the first magnitude.
Maria Primachenko constantly learns from her native Polesie nature. In her paintings, pagan images of fantastic monsters and birds are embodied. Behind these works there is a large, diverse school of folk art, a centuries-old culture of the people. It’s like a bundle of emotional impressions from fairy tales, legends, and life itself. The process of her creativity is a phenomenon of an amazing fusion of concrete thinking, intuition, fantasy and, finally, the subconscious, when unprecedented, sometimes bizarre images, bizarre decorative compositions are released that generously radiate the energy of kindness and naive wonder at the world. The artist’s works are always perceived as alive, part of nature, of the Ukrainian land. The artist’s floral compositions are reminiscent of wall paintings; they are extremely architectural. “Now, if we gathered folk craftsmen from all over Ukraine, what miracles they would create - Kyiv would bloom not only with gardens. Buildings would make people laugh...” - the artist dreamed.
Her “series of animals” of recent years is a unique phenomenon and has no analogues either in Russian or in world art. Fantastic Beasts is the creation of the artist's brilliant imagination. Such animals do not exist in nature.“Wild chaplun” - from the word “chaplun” - Primachenko came up with this name for one of the animals, focusing on its paws, capable of wading through alder thickets, and in general - through the mysterious jungle of life. The artist’s mysterious animals always have their earthly origins, and the impetus for their birth is the realities of today. Primachenko's fantastic beasts are both a warning and a call for friendship and peace.
Maria is not only a wonderful artist, but also a talented poet. The rhyming names of the paintings testify to her phenomenal talent for painting music, painting a song. Primachenko the poet realizes himself in his own captions to his paintings. These signatures are easy to remember. as if imprinted in memory:
“Three beaded beads in the peas still live with us...” Buslya - stork (dialect)
"The bears wanted honey"
There are also short jokes: “Chickens dance and plow bread”, “Hell’s dog is not afraid of reptiles”, “Raven had two women - he hugged both”, “Freckles-corneas are cheerful birds” and others.
I love to draw how people work in the fields, how young people walk. “It’s like poppies are blooming,” the artist admitted. “I love all living things.” I like to draw flowers. various birds and forest animals. I dress them in folk clothes, and they are so cheerful....
1986 Primachenko created an impressive Chernobyl series. Maria Primachenko’s native village is located in the 30-kilometer zone of Chernobyl, and the artist’s heart connected with thousands of strings with the destinies of those close and dear to her, who in one way or another suffered from the nuclear disaster.... A series of works dedicated to this tragedy spread throughout the world.
In the last years of her life, an old illness shackled Maria Oksentievna; she did not get out of bed. But she continued to communicate with the world - to draw... At the age of 89, on the night of August 18, 1997), a tireless worker of Ukrainian culture left us.
“Maria Primachenko is as important for Ukraine as Pirosmani is for Georgia, as Rousseau is for France. And yet, there is still no museum of the artist either in Kyiv or in her homeland.”
The paintings of Maria Primachenko are kept at home by her son Fyodor and have been stolen more than once. More recently, almost 100 works by the artist were also stolen. but fortunately everyone was found and returned.
It’s sad, but we don’t know how to respect and protect our national wealth. ((
Paintings by Maria Primachenko are here.
