Kateryna Kosianenko

Kateryna Volodymyrivna Kosianenko was born on 21 November 1978 in Kyiv. She graduated from the Taras Shevchenko Republican Art School in 1996 and from the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in 2002, studying stage design under the celebrated scenographer Danylo Lider, then completed an assistantship in painting under People's Artist of Ukraine Vasyl Hurin in 2005. Her practice spans easel painting, icon painting, graphics, puppets and design for theatre and cinema, and she builds her work into cycles — "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors" (2001–02), "Calendar" (2003–05), "Obolon Saints" (2012–13), "Mamais and Mamaivnas", "Graffiti for Anna" (2016), "Earth" (2016), "Tales" (2018–22), "List of Ships" (2019–20), "Victory" (2022–25) and "Eyewitnesses" (2024–25). Stylistically she draws on Ukrainian Baroque icon painting and the folk Cossack Mamai tradition, recasting saints, angels and Mamai figures as inhabitants of contemporary Kyiv districts. Awards include first prize at the 100th Salon d'Automne in Paris (2003), a presidential grant for gifted youth (2004), a silver medal of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine (2006), fifth prize in painting and the Lorenzo il Magnifico medal at the VII Florence Biennale (2009), a GAUDE POLONIA scholarship (2011) and the Kyiv Art Prize / Serhii Shyshko Award (2018). She held residencies at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris (2009) and the Jan Matejko Academy in Kraków (2011), and painted a series at an artists' residency in Frontino, Italy, in 2015. Her work is held by the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture, the Museum of the History of Kyiv, the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum in Lviv and private collections in Ukraine, Poland, France, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada and Croatia. She was named Honoured Artist of Ukraine in 2019.