Ukrainian Graphic Art & Book Design
Українська графіка та книжкове мистецтво
An early-20th-century renaissance of Ukrainian graphic art, typography, book illustration and state symbolism. Its founding figure Heorhiy Narbut created the visual identity of the modern Ukrainian state.
Artists of the Movement
Vasyl Krychevskyi
1873–1952
Pioneering painter, architect and graphic artist; a founder of Ukrainian Art Nouveau; designed the trident state emblem and banknotes of the UNR (1918); emigrated, died in Venezuela.
Heorhii Narbut
1886–1920
Founding genius of modern Ukrainian graphic art; designed UNR banknotes, stamps and the state emblem, and the celebrated Ukrainian Alphabet; professor and rector of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts.
Vasyl Sedliar
1899–1937
Close associate of Boichuk; painter, ceramicist and book artist best known for his complete cycle of illustrations to Shevchenko's 'Kobzar'; executed by the NKVD in 1937.
Oleksii Fishchenko
1920–2010
Oleksii Fishchenko (1920–2010) was a Ukrainian graphic artist and printmaker, a People's Artist of Ukraine, best known for large colour linocuts of Ukrainian landscape and of Kyiv. He cut his blocks in multiple boards and printed them by hand, without a press, which gave his prints an unusually dense, painterly colour. His long series «Ритми. Київ» (Rhythms. Kyiv), begun in the 1980s, is his signature cycle.
Liubov Panchenko
1938–2022
Liubov Panchenko (1938–2022) was a Ukrainian artist and fashion designer of the Sixtiers generation who worked across clothing design, textile appliqué, embroidery, watercolour, gouache and linocut, always through a Ukrainian ornamental idiom. Blacklisted by the Soviet authorities, she was never admitted to the Union of Artists and neither exhibited nor published for decades. She spent a month under Russian occupation in Bucha in 2022 and died on 30 April that year, aged 84, after starvation and exhaustion.
Serhii Komornyi
b. 1963
Serhii Komornyi (b. 1963, Chuhuiv) is a Kharkiv-based Ukrainian artist who works almost entirely in pastel on large-format paper, in a manner that sits between drawing and painting. He paints psychological portraits, plein-air landscapes and still lifes with a bright impressionist palette.
Works from this Movement
Ukrainian Alphabet (Abetka) — Letter A
Heorhii Narbut
A sheet from Narbut's Ukrainian Alphabet depicting the letter А with folk and Baroque motifs.
100 Karbovantsiv Banknote of the UNR
Heorhii Narbut
Narbut's design for the 100 karbovantsiv note, the first banknote of the Ukrainian People's Republic.
Great State Emblem of the UNR
Vasyl Krychevskyi
Project for the Coat of Arms of the Ukrainian State
Heorhii Narbut
Narbut's heraldic project for the state coat of arms, built around the Volodymyr trident.
Banknote of the UNR (40 shah)
Heorhii Narbut
In the Liknep School
Vasyl Sedliar
Execution at Mezhyhiria
Vasyl Sedliar
A partly destroyed monumental painting; one of the few surviving works of Sedliar, executed in 1937.
Illustration for Shevchenko's 'Kobzar'
Vasyl Sedliar
An illustration for the landmark 1931 'Kobzar' in the monumental Boychukist style.
From the series Rhythms. Kyiv
Oleksii Fishchenko
An untitled sheet from the Rhythms. Kyiv cycle, signed and dated by the artist at lower right, and the earliest securely dated print from the series located in this research. Its near-square format and flattened colour planes set the pattern for the whole cycle.
Mystery of Dusk, from the series Rhythms. Kyiv
Oleksii Fishchenko
A twilight view of Kyiv in which domes and rooflines are pressed into overlapping bands of deepening colour. It is one of four sheets from the cycle held by the Khmelnytskyi museum.
Break of Evening Light, from the series Rhythms. Kyiv
Oleksii Fishchenko
Evening light fractures across the Kyiv skyline, the composition built from the abrupt tonal breaks the title names. It shows how far Fishchenko pushed the multi-board linocut toward the effect of painting.
In Daylight Radiance, from the series Rhythms. Kyiv
Oleksii Fishchenko
The daylight counterpart within the cycle, with the city dissolved into high-keyed planes of light. The artist inscribed the title in pencil in six lines on the reverse.