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Hornjatkevyc Interior Church Design
Damjan Hornjatkevyc was a painter and art scholar. He painted mostly portraits but also the interior designs in four churches in Ukraine. He immigrated to the United States in 1949, where he focused on landscapes. Exhibitions of his works were held in New York in the 1960s, and posthumously after his death in 1980. He was the vice president of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the US and the head of its fine arts section (1951-70). He published numerous academic articles about Ukrainian artists, folk art and the history of art.
UMCAB has 9 framed designs of a church interior by Damjan Hornjatkevyc. They were donated to the museum by Damjan’s widow in 1991. There was an exhibit of some 400 of Damjan’s artworks at St. John’s Cultural Centre in October 1991.
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Bukovynski Verchornytsi
“Bukovynski Vechornytsi” is a watercolor by Valeriy Semenko. Valeriy was born in Chernivtsi, Ukraine. In 1989 he graduated from the Ivan Fedorov Academy of Publishing, Faculty of Graphic Arts, in Lviv, and worked as an art director in the printing and publishing industry before moving to Canada. As a painter and graphic designer he designs brochures, greeting cards, posters, booklets, and more. He paints with watercolor, acrylic, gouache and oil. Valeriy has participated in many group and solo exhibitions. His artworks are in private collections worldwide. Currently he is an art instructor at Barvy art studio in Edmonton.
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Edward Kozak
Edward Kozak was born in Hirne, Stryi district, Halychyna, Ukraine in 1902. He studied at the Oleksa Novakivsky Art School in Lviv and then illustrated several satire magazines. He also sketched and painted in oils. While in the displaced persons’ camps in Germany and Austria from 1944 to 1949, he led the Association of Fine Artists, and started publishing his satirical magazine Lys.
He immigrated to Detroit in 1949 and became a television animator, winning 1st prize from the National Educational Association in 1957 for his animation of children’s films. Kozak, who had several pseudonyms, including “EKO”, re-started Lys as Lys Mykyta (1951-90), famously satirizing Stalin and commenting on contemporary Ukrainian in this humour magazine.
Kozak worked in various mediums: oils, tempera, gouache, acrylics and mosaics. He is credited with over 700 paintings in his American period. Ukrainian history and Ukrainian folk motifs featured prominently in his paintings. Kozak died on September 22, 1992, and his funeral was held at St. Josaphat’s Ukrainian Catholic Church in Warren, Michigan.
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Shostak December Morning
“December morning on prairie farm” is an oil painted in 1987 by Peter Shostak. Shostak’s art reflects his love of his Ukrainian cultural heritage and of the Alberta prairies where he was born in 1943. He graduated from the University of Alberta in 1969 with a Master’s Degree in Art. He then became an Assistant Professor of Art Education at the University of Victoria.
In 1979, he resigned from teaching to focus on painting. He produces oil paintings and serigraphs and has consolidated many of his artworks in several published books on specific themes. He has exhibited his works widely across Canada.
In 2003, Peter Shostak received the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal in recognition of his outstanding exemplary contribution to Canada. He also is the recipient of the Taras Shevchenko Medal, the highest honour awarded by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress.
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Dobrolige Ukrainian Village
Wadym Dobrolige majored in portraiture & landscape painting (1931-35) at Kyiv Institute of Arts, studying under Fedir Krychevsky, an influential Ukrainian early modernist painter. He also studied design, stage setting, stage graphics & book lay-outs. Then he studied monumental painting for a year at Leningrad Art Academy. In 1936 he was arrested for a publication the Soviet authorities deemed suspicious. He spent about 2 years in prison, mostly in Siberia. When Dobrolige returned to Kyiv from Siberia in 1938, he worked for Oleksandr Dovzhenko and continued to paint. He fled Kyiv with his wife in 1943, eventually setting up & heading an art studio in a Displaced Persons camp from 1945-48.
In 1948 Wadym & Valentyna were sponsored by Peter Svarich to come to Vegreville, where they stayed 2 years, and he produced the murals for St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Orthodox Church. From 1950-55 Wadym was artist-decorator for Hudson’s Bay in Edmonton. From 1955 to 1970 he produced polychromies, icons & iconostases for Ukrainian churches all over Alberta. From 1970-73 he created the great iconostasis for St. John’s Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral in Edmonton. Wadym was accomplished in landscape, portraiture, still-life & floral compositions. He mostly worked with oils, but also with pastels, watercolors & tempera.
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Trembita Player
The “Trembita Player” was created by Leonid Molodozhanyn (Leo Mol). Molodozhanyn was born in 1915 in Volyn (northwestern Ukraine), initially learning pottery from his father. He studied art in Leningrad, Berlin and the Hague.
In 1948 he and his wife immigrated to Winnipeg. In Canada, he started as a ceramic artist and church painter. He created over 90 stained glass windows, which were very well received.
He soon focused on sculpting, and by the 1960s he was earning international commissions for his sculptures. Some of his more notable monuments include: Taras Shevchenko in Washington DC (1964) and Buenos Aires (1971), Queen Elizabeth II in Winnipeg (1970) and John Diefenbaker in Ottawa (1985). He created numerous busts of famous people, including Winston Churchill (1966), Dwight D. Eisenhower (1965), John F. Kennedy (1969), Popes Paul VI (1967), John XXIII (1967) and John Paul II (1982), and Cardinal Yosyf Slipy (1971). To commemorate the millennium of Ukrainian Christianity in 1988, he created bronze monuments of St. Volodymyr for the Ukrainian communities in London (England), Winnipeg and Toronto.
He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Manitoba in 1985 and the Order of Canada in 1989. In 1992 the Leo Mol Sculpture Garden, a permanent showcase of Mol’s sculptures, opened in Winnipeg. Mol continued to sculpt until he was almost 90. He passed away in 2009 at the age of 94.
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Madonna by Shablovsky
“Madonna” by George Shablovsky of Kyiv, 1990, oil
