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Artist Spotlight: Maria Prymachenko
We dive into the life of the Ukrainian artist, and explore the presentation of her works over the past year...
January 3, 2024
‘I grazed geese under a willow tree and learned to draw with a stick in the sand.’
Maria Prymachenko (1909-1997) spent almost her entire life in rural Polissya, near Kyiv, rarely leaving her courtyard, let alone her village. Self-taught, her visionary paintings of brightly-coloured beasts and stylised landscapes were born of a vivid imagination and a lifelong love of art. But her works have long travelled beyond the borders of Bolotnya, the village where she was born and died.
Prymachenko left school after contracting polio, which left her with a physical impairment and a great sense of empathy towards both human and animal suffering. With her family at home, she trained in traditional Ukrainian crafts including embroidery, ceramics, and painting Easter eggs. In 1936, she was invited to join the Central Experimental Workshops at the Kyiv Museum of Ukrainian Art by the textile weaver Tatiana Flora and, in the same year, exhibited in the hall at the First Republican Exhibition of Folk Art. It was an exhibition which travelled to Moscow, and St. Petersburg, highlighting the exchange between Russia and Ukraine during the period of the Soviet Union.
Whilst the Soviet leader Stalin sought to suppress Ukrainian folk traditions, in Kyiv, they still flourished; As both a woman, and a peasant, she was perceived to pose particularly little threat. Here, she painted animals for the first time. Challenging her contemporary mythologisation or Balkanisation as a village-based fantasist, it was also here she first visited a zoo and began her engagement with global art and politics.
A number of successful exhibitions across the Soviet Union, in Warsaw, Sofia, Prague, as well as Canada and Japan, followed. Prymachenko was awarded a golden medal at the 1937 Paris World Fair, where Pablo Picasso showed Guernica (1937), and mythically remarked: ‘I bow down before the artistic miracle of this brilliant Ukrainian.’
At a recent Saatchi Gallery exhibition of her work, we could see only her paintings, originally conceived as illustrations for a children’s book. They reflected village life through the artist’s magical and ‘naïve’ lens; with no formal artistic education, Prymachenko is heralded as a pioneer – at one point, ‘the first’ – to work in primitivism and ‘folk art’.
The artist’s boldness was reflected in the curation; Natalia Gnatiuk, co-curator and partner of the Prymachenko Family Foundation, peppered her introduction with lyrical, even spiritual, phrasing. Her village may be small, but ‘life is bustling!’, with the stitching of wedding towels and textiles, sheep being herded, and fish caught from the water which runs through her paintings.
Women, needless to say, are the protagonists in these images. Two paintings were placed together like diary entries, a testament to her being frightened by an old woman, and subsequently falling ill. In them, the woman, Fedorykha, emerges out of a crooked house in stark black-and-white; Maria and her chickens are trapped between the fence and the yard borders of yellow and blue - allusions, today, to the flag. In the next, she is tucked up in bed, only her head and two plaits poking out of the covers: ‘I was paralyzed. Then everything got better.’
Animals are welcome in Prymachenko’s house; here, they sit on her shelves or peer out of windows. People, by contrast, live most of their lives outside, challenging the binary of human/nature. On one double-sided work, we could find five men standing to feast in a lush green garden; on the reverse, two women conversing in an orchard, the sky lit STABILO pink. The artist’s works are marked by her use of vivid, even neon colours, fluorescents supplied by her foreign patrons.
For many artists, painting on both sides is a practical response to a scarcity of materials, and evidence of their process and socioeconomic status. Prymachenko’s subjects are normally quite different, but in one case, she duplicates the image of a woman rocking a pushchair with different colours – one vivid yellow, one lurid green. It’s playful; we could see her too testing or experimenting with how her visions manifest on the page. There are ‘authentic’ Ukrainian subjects and motifs but also, atypical orange fruits, and trees, which only highlight the plurality of her practice.
The lake that runs near the artist’s home appears in the many images; likewise, the apple tree planted by her hand. They’re visual sources of her and the village’s existence. Most of her works come untitled, or matter-of-factly named, for instance ‘A Pig Grazed’. Later, larger works have longer titles – ‘The Beast Eats the Lower Cherries to Prevent Anyone Else Eating Them’ – perhaps a sign of an artist growing in confidence, or more simply, slowing production in older age.
More drawings and writings can be found on the reverse; at the Saatchi Gallery, they were often scanned, and displayed next to the image. They give context to uncaptioned works, further details, like a diary, and evidence how art and life were not separate to her but entwined. It’s a delight to see her hand, and her use of the Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabet, a point of connection across the region of Europe.
Prymachenko painted daily, but some years were more prolific than others. The trauma of World War II, the loss of both her partner and her brother, the former lost fighting in Finland, the latter executed by the Nazis’, led to a brief break in her practice, until 1967. Whilst working as a widowed mother, she also educated children in her own school, and others in her local community; both her son and grandson would become artists too. The Saatchi space was light on information – much more can be found online – but clear is the intent to position Prymachenko’s work in the context of the preservation of cultural heritage and history in Ukraine.
Stark, at the end of the gallery, was a modern poster, boasting the architectural plans for an Art Residence and Museum of Maria Prymachenko. The proposed white, elongated eggbox sits stark atop the natural landscape, recalling the likes of Hilma af Klint’s Temple, or perhaps even the Benesse Art Site Naoshima, in Japan.
The new Museum is a product of the current conflict; though the Foundation has long collected her works, their local museum was burned down in February by ‘russians’ - it is unclear whether the lower-case-r was a mistake in the curation, or a political statement. It will be a place of strength,’ says Gnatiuk, ‘capable of welcoming guests from around the world after Ukraine's victory.’ Few of her personal belongings survived the fire – her easel, paint, and bed – and it’s unclear how many of her works did too. Of course, we read of the viburnum plant which remains outside her window, the Ukrainian symbol of life.
So the Foundation seeks to reconstruct the past, with a video re-enacting the artist’s daily life – not the first - and a ghostly AI-reproduced photograph of the artist. It’s a chilling conclusion to an exhibition filled with warmth and humour. This video – and all the installation photographs – were presented by Prymachenko’s great-granddaughter, Anastasiya. Whilst the artist was clearly comfortable with public display, we cannot say the same for the reproduction of her image, an executive decision by the Foundation, and the next generations.
Since the destruction of the museum, it has only been possible to see the artist’s paintings in white cube exhibitions, often in other countries, reflecting how the war with Russia has only strengthened Ukrainian national identity, and its place on the global stage. Indeed, the new Museum, a collaboration with architect Victoria Yakusha – a vocal ‘ambassador’ and preserver of Ukrainian cultural heritage - may not have come without it. Above all, her own generosity will ensure her legacy; she scarcely sold, but preferred to gift her works, many to friends and networks outside of Ukraine.
This critical engagement also encourages us to consider the intentions of the Saatchi Gallery when collaborating with the Foundation, and the Embassy of Ukraine. The artist has long been acclaimed in Ukraine, a recipient of national prizes, and well-represented in collections (and now, ironically, on Finland’s national aeroplanes). 2009, the one-hundredth anniversary of her birth, was marked as Prymachenko Year, marked with postage stamps and playgrounds.
But global media outlets (and even GB News) have seized on the chance to claim her in the context of our contemporary moment, reading her anti-war art in light of this particular conflict, one which commenced after the artist passed. They must be careful not to fall into anachronism, for the reality is, as always, more complex.
Her partner was a member of the Soviet Army, and she was well-respected by Russian journalists. Prymachenko was exhibited in and invited to Moscow to practice, an opportunity rejected only as she was mid-painting cycle. Her biographers suggest she was never a ‘political person’, for never depicting politicians; but this is to ignore how politics permeates her life and practice. (Some have read a hat on one of her beasts as a nod to Joseph Stalin’s cap, but it’s pure speculation.)
Her politics were global, but grounded in the local, her village just 30 kilometres from Chernobyl. Titles like ‘May that nuclear war be cursed!’ (1978) and ‘Mr Reagan, think about how heavy and heavy and unreasonable this Atom is’ (1986)’ speak to an altogether different and particular time – her bears aren’t necessarily Russian - and must not be conflated with contemporary political criticism, or efforts to decolonise museums. Indeed, there is nothing military about her depictions of the national army, a group bound by the strength of their folk traditions and culture, not their weapons.
Prymachenko was twice exhibited in the Venice Biennale 2022, and with good reason; her work certainly has renewed importance in light of the conflict. We should hope that this exhibition represents a rising interest and respect for Central and Eastern Europe, and that similar exhibitions of folk art from the Balkans, Baltics, or states not thrust in the global spotlight by war may soon follow. But so long as art markets launder Russian money, and Saatchi sells books of Soviet posters in the bookshop, it seems their pro-Ukraine politics will remain a visionary performance too.
‘I grazed geese under a willow tree and learned to draw with a stick in the sand.’
Maria Prymachenko (1909-1997) spent almost her entire life in rural Polissya, near Kyiv, rarely leaving her courtyard, let alone her village. Self-taught, her visionary paintings of brightly-coloured beasts and stylised landscapes were born of a vivid imagination and a lifelong love of art. But her works have long travelled beyond the borders of Bolotnya, the village where she was born and died.
Prymachenko left school after contracting polio, which left her with a physical impairment and a great sense of empathy towards both human and animal suffering. With her family at home, she trained in traditional Ukrainian crafts including embroidery, ceramics, and painting Easter eggs. In 1936, she was invited to join the Central Experimental Workshops at the Kyiv Museum of Ukrainian Art by the textile weaver Tatiana Flora and, in the same year, exhibited in the hall at the First Republican Exhibition of Folk Art. It was an exhibition which travelled to Moscow, and St. Petersburg, highlighting the exchange between Russia and Ukraine during the period of the Soviet Union.
Whilst the Soviet leader Stalin sought to suppress Ukrainian folk traditions, in Kyiv, they still flourished; As both a woman, and a peasant, she was perceived to pose particularly little threat. Here, she painted animals for the first time. Challenging her contemporary mythologisation or Balkanisation as a village-based fantasist, it was also here she first visited a zoo and began her engagement with global art and politics.
A number of successful exhibitions across the Soviet Union, in Warsaw, Sofia, Prague, as well as Canada and Japan, followed. Prymachenko was awarded a golden medal at the 1937 Paris World Fair, where Pablo Picasso showed Guernica (1937), and mythically remarked: ‘I bow down before the artistic miracle of this brilliant Ukrainian.’
At a recent Saatchi Gallery exhibition of her work, we could see only her paintings, originally conceived as illustrations for a children’s book. They reflected village life through the artist’s magical and ‘naïve’ lens; with no formal artistic education, Prymachenko is heralded as a pioneer – at one point, ‘the first’ – to work in primitivism and ‘folk art’.
The artist’s boldness was reflected in the curation; Natalia Gnatiuk, co-curator and partner of the Prymachenko Family Foundation, peppered her introduction with lyrical, even spiritual, phrasing. Her village may be small, but ‘life is bustling!’, with the stitching of wedding towels and textiles, sheep being herded, and fish caught from the water which runs through her paintings.
Women, needless to say, are the protagonists in these images. Two paintings were placed together like diary entries, a testament to her being frightened by an old woman, and subsequently falling ill. In them, the woman, Fedorykha, emerges out of a crooked house in stark black-and-white; Maria and her chickens are trapped between the fence and the yard borders of yellow and blue - allusions, today, to the flag. In the next, she is tucked up in bed, only her head and two plaits poking out of the covers: ‘I was paralyzed. Then everything got better.’
Animals are welcome in Prymachenko’s house; here, they sit on her shelves or peer out of windows. People, by contrast, live most of their lives outside, challenging the binary of human/nature. On one double-sided work, we could find five men standing to feast in a lush green garden; on the reverse, two women conversing in an orchard, the sky lit STABILO pink. The artist’s works are marked by her use of vivid, even neon colours, fluorescents supplied by her foreign patrons.
For many artists, painting on both sides is a practical response to a scarcity of materials, and evidence of their process and socioeconomic status. Prymachenko’s subjects are normally quite different, but in one case, she duplicates the image of a woman rocking a pushchair with different colours – one vivid yellow, one lurid green. It’s playful; we could see her too testing or experimenting with how her visions manifest on the page. There are ‘authentic’ Ukrainian subjects and motifs but also, atypical orange fruits, and trees, which only highlight the plurality of her practice.
The lake that runs near the artist’s home appears in the many images; likewise, the apple tree planted by her hand. They’re visual sources of her and the village’s existence. Most of her works come untitled, or matter-of-factly named, for instance ‘A Pig Grazed’. Later, larger works have longer titles – ‘The Beast Eats the Lower Cherries to Prevent Anyone Else Eating Them’ – perhaps a sign of an artist growing in confidence, or more simply, slowing production in older age.
More drawings and writings can be found on the reverse; at the Saatchi Gallery, they were often scanned, and displayed next to the image. They give context to uncaptioned works, further details, like a diary, and evidence how art and life were not separate to her but entwined. It’s a delight to see her hand, and her use of the Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabet, a point of connection across the region of Europe.
Prymachenko painted daily, but some years were more prolific than others. The trauma of World War II, the loss of both her partner and her brother, the former lost fighting in Finland, the latter executed by the Nazis’, led to a brief break in her practice, until 1967. Whilst working as a widowed mother, she also educated children in her own school, and others in her local community; both her son and grandson would become artists too. The Saatchi space was light on information – much more can be found online – but clear is the intent to position Prymachenko’s work in the context of the preservation of cultural heritage and history in Ukraine.
Stark, at the end of the gallery, was a modern poster, boasting the architectural plans for an Art Residence and Museum of Maria Prymachenko. The proposed white, elongated eggbox sits stark atop the natural landscape, recalling the likes of Hilma af Klint’s Temple, or perhaps even the Benesse Art Site Naoshima, in Japan.
The new Museum is a product of the current conflict; though the Foundation has long collected her works, their local museum was burned down in February by ‘russians’ - it is unclear whether the lower-case-r was a mistake in the curation, or a political statement. It will be a place of strength,’ says Gnatiuk, ‘capable of welcoming guests from around the world after Ukraine's victory.’ Few of her personal belongings survived the fire – her easel, paint, and bed – and it’s unclear how many of her works did too. Of course, we read of the viburnum plant which remains outside her window, the Ukrainian symbol of life.
So the Foundation seeks to reconstruct the past, with a video re-enacting the artist’s daily life – not the first - and a ghostly AI-reproduced photograph of the artist. It’s a chilling conclusion to an exhibition filled with warmth and humour. This video – and all the installation photographs – were presented by Prymachenko’s great-granddaughter, Anastasiya. Whilst the artist was clearly comfortable with public display, we cannot say the same for the reproduction of her image, an executive decision by the Foundation, and the next generations.
Since the destruction of the museum, it has only been possible to see the artist’s paintings in white cube exhibitions, often in other countries, reflecting how the war with Russia has only strengthened Ukrainian national identity, and its place on the global stage. Indeed, the new Museum, a collaboration with architect Victoria Yakusha – a vocal ‘ambassador’ and preserver of Ukrainian cultural heritage - may not have come without it. Above all, her own generosity will ensure her legacy; she scarcely sold, but preferred to gift her works, many to friends and networks outside of Ukraine.
This critical engagement also encourages us to consider the intentions of the Saatchi Gallery when collaborating with the Foundation, and the Embassy of Ukraine. The artist has long been acclaimed in Ukraine, a recipient of national prizes, and well-represented in collections (and now, ironically, on Finland’s national aeroplanes). 2009, the one-hundredth anniversary of her birth, was marked as Prymachenko Year, marked with postage stamps and playgrounds.
But global media outlets (and even GB News) have seized on the chance to claim her in the context of our contemporary moment, reading her anti-war art in light of this particular conflict, one which commenced after the artist passed. They must be careful not to fall into anachronism, for the reality is, as always, more complex.
Her partner was a member of the Soviet Army, and she was well-respected by Russian journalists. Prymachenko was exhibited in and invited to Moscow to practice, an opportunity rejected only as she was mid-painting cycle. Her biographers suggest she was never a ‘political person’, for never depicting politicians; but this is to ignore how politics permeates her life and practice. (Some have read a hat on one of her beasts as a nod to Joseph Stalin’s cap, but it’s pure speculation.)
Her politics were global, but grounded in the local, her village just 30 kilometres from Chernobyl. Titles like ‘May that nuclear war be cursed!’ (1978) and ‘Mr Reagan, think about how heavy and heavy and unreasonable this Atom is’ (1986)’ speak to an altogether different and particular time – her bears aren’t necessarily Russian - and must not be conflated with contemporary political criticism, or efforts to decolonise museums. Indeed, there is nothing military about her depictions of the national army, a group bound by the strength of their folk traditions and culture, not their weapons.
Prymachenko was twice exhibited in the Venice Biennale 2022, and with good reason; her work certainly has renewed importance in light of the conflict. We should hope that this exhibition represents a rising interest and respect for Central and Eastern Europe, and that similar exhibitions of folk art from the Balkans, Baltics, or states not thrust in the global spotlight by war may soon follow. But so long as art markets launder Russian money, and Saatchi sells books of Soviet posters in the bookshop, it seems their pro-Ukraine politics will remain a visionary performance too.
‘I grazed geese under a willow tree and learned to draw with a stick in the sand.’
Maria Prymachenko (1909-1997) spent almost her entire life in rural Polissya, near Kyiv, rarely leaving her courtyard, let alone her village. Self-taught, her visionary paintings of brightly-coloured beasts and stylised landscapes were born of a vivid imagination and a lifelong love of art. But her works have long travelled beyond the borders of Bolotnya, the village where she was born and died.
Prymachenko left school after contracting polio, which left her with a physical impairment and a great sense of empathy towards both human and animal suffering. With her family at home, she trained in traditional Ukrainian crafts including embroidery, ceramics, and painting Easter eggs. In 1936, she was invited to join the Central Experimental Workshops at the Kyiv Museum of Ukrainian Art by the textile weaver Tatiana Flora and, in the same year, exhibited in the hall at the First Republican Exhibition of Folk Art. It was an exhibition which travelled to Moscow, and St. Petersburg, highlighting the exchange between Russia and Ukraine during the period of the Soviet Union.
Whilst the Soviet leader Stalin sought to suppress Ukrainian folk traditions, in Kyiv, they still flourished; As both a woman, and a peasant, she was perceived to pose particularly little threat. Here, she painted animals for the first time. Challenging her contemporary mythologisation or Balkanisation as a village-based fantasist, it was also here she first visited a zoo and began her engagement with global art and politics.
A number of successful exhibitions across the Soviet Union, in Warsaw, Sofia, Prague, as well as Canada and Japan, followed. Prymachenko was awarded a golden medal at the 1937 Paris World Fair, where Pablo Picasso showed Guernica (1937), and mythically remarked: ‘I bow down before the artistic miracle of this brilliant Ukrainian.’
At a recent Saatchi Gallery exhibition of her work, we could see only her paintings, originally conceived as illustrations for a children’s book. They reflected village life through the artist’s magical and ‘naïve’ lens; with no formal artistic education, Prymachenko is heralded as a pioneer – at one point, ‘the first’ – to work in primitivism and ‘folk art’.
The artist’s boldness was reflected in the curation; Natalia Gnatiuk, co-curator and partner of the Prymachenko Family Foundation, peppered her introduction with lyrical, even spiritual, phrasing. Her village may be small, but ‘life is bustling!’, with the stitching of wedding towels and textiles, sheep being herded, and fish caught from the water which runs through her paintings.
Women, needless to say, are the protagonists in these images. Two paintings were placed together like diary entries, a testament to her being frightened by an old woman, and subsequently falling ill. In them, the woman, Fedorykha, emerges out of a crooked house in stark black-and-white; Maria and her chickens are trapped between the fence and the yard borders of yellow and blue - allusions, today, to the flag. In the next, she is tucked up in bed, only her head and two plaits poking out of the covers: ‘I was paralyzed. Then everything got better.’
Animals are welcome in Prymachenko’s house; here, they sit on her shelves or peer out of windows. People, by contrast, live most of their lives outside, challenging the binary of human/nature. On one double-sided work, we could find five men standing to feast in a lush green garden; on the reverse, two women conversing in an orchard, the sky lit STABILO pink. The artist’s works are marked by her use of vivid, even neon colours, fluorescents supplied by her foreign patrons.
For many artists, painting on both sides is a practical response to a scarcity of materials, and evidence of their process and socioeconomic status. Prymachenko’s subjects are normally quite different, but in one case, she duplicates the image of a woman rocking a pushchair with different colours – one vivid yellow, one lurid green. It’s playful; we could see her too testing or experimenting with how her visions manifest on the page. There are ‘authentic’ Ukrainian subjects and motifs but also, atypical orange fruits, and trees, which only highlight the plurality of her practice.
The lake that runs near the artist’s home appears in the many images; likewise, the apple tree planted by her hand. They’re visual sources of her and the village’s existence. Most of her works come untitled, or matter-of-factly named, for instance ‘A Pig Grazed’. Later, larger works have longer titles – ‘The Beast Eats the Lower Cherries to Prevent Anyone Else Eating Them’ – perhaps a sign of an artist growing in confidence, or more simply, slowing production in older age.
More drawings and writings can be found on the reverse; at the Saatchi Gallery, they were often scanned, and displayed next to the image. They give context to uncaptioned works, further details, like a diary, and evidence how art and life were not separate to her but entwined. It’s a delight to see her hand, and her use of the Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabet, a point of connection across the region of Europe.
Prymachenko painted daily, but some years were more prolific than others. The trauma of World War II, the loss of both her partner and her brother, the former lost fighting in Finland, the latter executed by the Nazis’, led to a brief break in her practice, until 1967. Whilst working as a widowed mother, she also educated children in her own school, and others in her local community; both her son and grandson would become artists too. The Saatchi space was light on information – much more can be found online – but clear is the intent to position Prymachenko’s work in the context of the preservation of cultural heritage and history in Ukraine.
Stark, at the end of the gallery, was a modern poster, boasting the architectural plans for an Art Residence and Museum of Maria Prymachenko. The proposed white, elongated eggbox sits stark atop the natural landscape, recalling the likes of Hilma af Klint’s Temple, or perhaps even the Benesse Art Site Naoshima, in Japan.
The new Museum is a product of the current conflict; though the Foundation has long collected her works, their local museum was burned down in February by ‘russians’ - it is unclear whether the lower-case-r was a mistake in the curation, or a political statement. It will be a place of strength,’ says Gnatiuk, ‘capable of welcoming guests from around the world after Ukraine's victory.’ Few of her personal belongings survived the fire – her easel, paint, and bed – and it’s unclear how many of her works did too. Of course, we read of the viburnum plant which remains outside her window, the Ukrainian symbol of life.
So the Foundation seeks to reconstruct the past, with a video re-enacting the artist’s daily life – not the first - and a ghostly AI-reproduced photograph of the artist. It’s a chilling conclusion to an exhibition filled with warmth and humour. This video – and all the installation photographs – were presented by Prymachenko’s great-granddaughter, Anastasiya. Whilst the artist was clearly comfortable with public display, we cannot say the same for the reproduction of her image, an executive decision by the Foundation, and the next generations.
Since the destruction of the museum, it has only been possible to see the artist’s paintings in white cube exhibitions, often in other countries, reflecting how the war with Russia has only strengthened Ukrainian national identity, and its place on the global stage. Indeed, the new Museum, a collaboration with architect Victoria Yakusha – a vocal ‘ambassador’ and preserver of Ukrainian cultural heritage - may not have come without it. Above all, her own generosity will ensure her legacy; she scarcely sold, but preferred to gift her works, many to friends and networks outside of Ukraine.
This critical engagement also encourages us to consider the intentions of the Saatchi Gallery when collaborating with the Foundation, and the Embassy of Ukraine. The artist has long been acclaimed in Ukraine, a recipient of national prizes, and well-represented in collections (and now, ironically, on Finland’s national aeroplanes). 2009, the one-hundredth anniversary of her birth, was marked as Prymachenko Year, marked with postage stamps and playgrounds.
But global media outlets (and even GB News) have seized on the chance to claim her in the context of our contemporary moment, reading her anti-war art in light of this particular conflict, one which commenced after the artist passed. They must be careful not to fall into anachronism, for the reality is, as always, more complex.
Her partner was a member of the Soviet Army, and she was well-respected by Russian journalists. Prymachenko was exhibited in and invited to Moscow to practice, an opportunity rejected only as she was mid-painting cycle. Her biographers suggest she was never a ‘political person’, for never depicting politicians; but this is to ignore how politics permeates her life and practice. (Some have read a hat on one of her beasts as a nod to Joseph Stalin’s cap, but it’s pure speculation.)
Her politics were global, but grounded in the local, her village just 30 kilometres from Chernobyl. Titles like ‘May that nuclear war be cursed!’ (1978) and ‘Mr Reagan, think about how heavy and heavy and unreasonable this Atom is’ (1986)’ speak to an altogether different and particular time – her bears aren’t necessarily Russian - and must not be conflated with contemporary political criticism, or efforts to decolonise museums. Indeed, there is nothing military about her depictions of the national army, a group bound by the strength of their folk traditions and culture, not their weapons.
Prymachenko was twice exhibited in the Venice Biennale 2022, and with good reason; her work certainly has renewed importance in light of the conflict. We should hope that this exhibition represents a rising interest and respect for Central and Eastern Europe, and that similar exhibitions of folk art from the Balkans, Baltics, or states not thrust in the global spotlight by war may soon follow. But so long as art markets launder Russian money, and Saatchi sells books of Soviet posters in the bookshop, it seems their pro-Ukraine politics will remain a visionary performance too.
‘I grazed geese under a willow tree and learned to draw with a stick in the sand.’
Maria Prymachenko (1909-1997) spent almost her entire life in rural Polissya, near Kyiv, rarely leaving her courtyard, let alone her village. Self-taught, her visionary paintings of brightly-coloured beasts and stylised landscapes were born of a vivid imagination and a lifelong love of art. But her works have long travelled beyond the borders of Bolotnya, the village where she was born and died.
Prymachenko left school after contracting polio, which left her with a physical impairment and a great sense of empathy towards both human and animal suffering. With her family at home, she trained in traditional Ukrainian crafts including embroidery, ceramics, and painting Easter eggs. In 1936, she was invited to join the Central Experimental Workshops at the Kyiv Museum of Ukrainian Art by the textile weaver Tatiana Flora and, in the same year, exhibited in the hall at the First Republican Exhibition of Folk Art. It was an exhibition which travelled to Moscow, and St. Petersburg, highlighting the exchange between Russia and Ukraine during the period of the Soviet Union.
Whilst the Soviet leader Stalin sought to suppress Ukrainian folk traditions, in Kyiv, they still flourished; As both a woman, and a peasant, she was perceived to pose particularly little threat. Here, she painted animals for the first time. Challenging her contemporary mythologisation or Balkanisation as a village-based fantasist, it was also here she first visited a zoo and began her engagement with global art and politics.
A number of successful exhibitions across the Soviet Union, in Warsaw, Sofia, Prague, as well as Canada and Japan, followed. Prymachenko was awarded a golden medal at the 1937 Paris World Fair, where Pablo Picasso showed Guernica (1937), and mythically remarked: ‘I bow down before the artistic miracle of this brilliant Ukrainian.’
At a recent Saatchi Gallery exhibition of her work, we could see only her paintings, originally conceived as illustrations for a children’s book. They reflected village life through the artist’s magical and ‘naïve’ lens; with no formal artistic education, Prymachenko is heralded as a pioneer – at one point, ‘the first’ – to work in primitivism and ‘folk art’.
The artist’s boldness was reflected in the curation; Natalia Gnatiuk, co-curator and partner of the Prymachenko Family Foundation, peppered her introduction with lyrical, even spiritual, phrasing. Her village may be small, but ‘life is bustling!’, with the stitching of wedding towels and textiles, sheep being herded, and fish caught from the water which runs through her paintings.
Women, needless to say, are the protagonists in these images. Two paintings were placed together like diary entries, a testament to her being frightened by an old woman, and subsequently falling ill. In them, the woman, Fedorykha, emerges out of a crooked house in stark black-and-white; Maria and her chickens are trapped between the fence and the yard borders of yellow and blue - allusions, today, to the flag. In the next, she is tucked up in bed, only her head and two plaits poking out of the covers: ‘I was paralyzed. Then everything got better.’
Animals are welcome in Prymachenko’s house; here, they sit on her shelves or peer out of windows. People, by contrast, live most of their lives outside, challenging the binary of human/nature. On one double-sided work, we could find five men standing to feast in a lush green garden; on the reverse, two women conversing in an orchard, the sky lit STABILO pink. The artist’s works are marked by her use of vivid, even neon colours, fluorescents supplied by her foreign patrons.
For many artists, painting on both sides is a practical response to a scarcity of materials, and evidence of their process and socioeconomic status. Prymachenko’s subjects are normally quite different, but in one case, she duplicates the image of a woman rocking a pushchair with different colours – one vivid yellow, one lurid green. It’s playful; we could see her too testing or experimenting with how her visions manifest on the page. There are ‘authentic’ Ukrainian subjects and motifs but also, atypical orange fruits, and trees, which only highlight the plurality of her practice.
The lake that runs near the artist’s home appears in the many images; likewise, the apple tree planted by her hand. They’re visual sources of her and the village’s existence. Most of her works come untitled, or matter-of-factly named, for instance ‘A Pig Grazed’. Later, larger works have longer titles – ‘The Beast Eats the Lower Cherries to Prevent Anyone Else Eating Them’ – perhaps a sign of an artist growing in confidence, or more simply, slowing production in older age.
More drawings and writings can be found on the reverse; at the Saatchi Gallery, they were often scanned, and displayed next to the image. They give context to uncaptioned works, further details, like a diary, and evidence how art and life were not separate to her but entwined. It’s a delight to see her hand, and her use of the Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabet, a point of connection across the region of Europe.
Prymachenko painted daily, but some years were more prolific than others. The trauma of World War II, the loss of both her partner and her brother, the former lost fighting in Finland, the latter executed by the Nazis’, led to a brief break in her practice, until 1967. Whilst working as a widowed mother, she also educated children in her own school, and others in her local community; both her son and grandson would become artists too. The Saatchi space was light on information – much more can be found online – but clear is the intent to position Prymachenko’s work in the context of the preservation of cultural heritage and history in Ukraine.
Stark, at the end of the gallery, was a modern poster, boasting the architectural plans for an Art Residence and Museum of Maria Prymachenko. The proposed white, elongated eggbox sits stark atop the natural landscape, recalling the likes of Hilma af Klint’s Temple, or perhaps even the Benesse Art Site Naoshima, in Japan.
The new Museum is a product of the current conflict; though the Foundation has long collected her works, their local museum was burned down in February by ‘russians’ - it is unclear whether the lower-case-r was a mistake in the curation, or a political statement. It will be a place of strength,’ says Gnatiuk, ‘capable of welcoming guests from around the world after Ukraine's victory.’ Few of her personal belongings survived the fire – her easel, paint, and bed – and it’s unclear how many of her works did too. Of course, we read of the viburnum plant which remains outside her window, the Ukrainian symbol of life.
So the Foundation seeks to reconstruct the past, with a video re-enacting the artist’s daily life – not the first - and a ghostly AI-reproduced photograph of the artist. It’s a chilling conclusion to an exhibition filled with warmth and humour. This video – and all the installation photographs – were presented by Prymachenko’s great-granddaughter, Anastasiya. Whilst the artist was clearly comfortable with public display, we cannot say the same for the reproduction of her image, an executive decision by the Foundation, and the next generations.
Since the destruction of the museum, it has only been possible to see the artist’s paintings in white cube exhibitions, often in other countries, reflecting how the war with Russia has only strengthened Ukrainian national identity, and its place on the global stage. Indeed, the new Museum, a collaboration with architect Victoria Yakusha – a vocal ‘ambassador’ and preserver of Ukrainian cultural heritage - may not have come without it. Above all, her own generosity will ensure her legacy; she scarcely sold, but preferred to gift her works, many to friends and networks outside of Ukraine.
This critical engagement also encourages us to consider the intentions of the Saatchi Gallery when collaborating with the Foundation, and the Embassy of Ukraine. The artist has long been acclaimed in Ukraine, a recipient of national prizes, and well-represented in collections (and now, ironically, on Finland’s national aeroplanes). 2009, the one-hundredth anniversary of her birth, was marked as Prymachenko Year, marked with postage stamps and playgrounds.
But global media outlets (and even GB News) have seized on the chance to claim her in the context of our contemporary moment, reading her anti-war art in light of this particular conflict, one which commenced after the artist passed. They must be careful not to fall into anachronism, for the reality is, as always, more complex.
Her partner was a member of the Soviet Army, and she was well-respected by Russian journalists. Prymachenko was exhibited in and invited to Moscow to practice, an opportunity rejected only as she was mid-painting cycle. Her biographers suggest she was never a ‘political person’, for never depicting politicians; but this is to ignore how politics permeates her life and practice. (Some have read a hat on one of her beasts as a nod to Joseph Stalin’s cap, but it’s pure speculation.)
Her politics were global, but grounded in the local, her village just 30 kilometres from Chernobyl. Titles like ‘May that nuclear war be cursed!’ (1978) and ‘Mr Reagan, think about how heavy and heavy and unreasonable this Atom is’ (1986)’ speak to an altogether different and particular time – her bears aren’t necessarily Russian - and must not be conflated with contemporary political criticism, or efforts to decolonise museums. Indeed, there is nothing military about her depictions of the national army, a group bound by the strength of their folk traditions and culture, not their weapons.
Prymachenko was twice exhibited in the Venice Biennale 2022, and with good reason; her work certainly has renewed importance in light of the conflict. We should hope that this exhibition represents a rising interest and respect for Central and Eastern Europe, and that similar exhibitions of folk art from the Balkans, Baltics, or states not thrust in the global spotlight by war may soon follow. But so long as art markets launder Russian money, and Saatchi sells books of Soviet posters in the bookshop, it seems their pro-Ukraine politics will remain a visionary performance too.
‘I grazed geese under a willow tree and learned to draw with a stick in the sand.’
Maria Prymachenko (1909-1997) spent almost her entire life in rural Polissya, near Kyiv, rarely leaving her courtyard, let alone her village. Self-taught, her visionary paintings of brightly-coloured beasts and stylised landscapes were born of a vivid imagination and a lifelong love of art. But her works have long travelled beyond the borders of Bolotnya, the village where she was born and died.
Prymachenko left school after contracting polio, which left her with a physical impairment and a great sense of empathy towards both human and animal suffering. With her family at home, she trained in traditional Ukrainian crafts including embroidery, ceramics, and painting Easter eggs. In 1936, she was invited to join the Central Experimental Workshops at the Kyiv Museum of Ukrainian Art by the textile weaver Tatiana Flora and, in the same year, exhibited in the hall at the First Republican Exhibition of Folk Art. It was an exhibition which travelled to Moscow, and St. Petersburg, highlighting the exchange between Russia and Ukraine during the period of the Soviet Union.
Whilst the Soviet leader Stalin sought to suppress Ukrainian folk traditions, in Kyiv, they still flourished; As both a woman, and a peasant, she was perceived to pose particularly little threat. Here, she painted animals for the first time. Challenging her contemporary mythologisation or Balkanisation as a village-based fantasist, it was also here she first visited a zoo and began her engagement with global art and politics.
A number of successful exhibitions across the Soviet Union, in Warsaw, Sofia, Prague, as well as Canada and Japan, followed. Prymachenko was awarded a golden medal at the 1937 Paris World Fair, where Pablo Picasso showed Guernica (1937), and mythically remarked: ‘I bow down before the artistic miracle of this brilliant Ukrainian.’
At a recent Saatchi Gallery exhibition of her work, we could see only her paintings, originally conceived as illustrations for a children’s book. They reflected village life through the artist’s magical and ‘naïve’ lens; with no formal artistic education, Prymachenko is heralded as a pioneer – at one point, ‘the first’ – to work in primitivism and ‘folk art’.
The artist’s boldness was reflected in the curation; Natalia Gnatiuk, co-curator and partner of the Prymachenko Family Foundation, peppered her introduction with lyrical, even spiritual, phrasing. Her village may be small, but ‘life is bustling!’, with the stitching of wedding towels and textiles, sheep being herded, and fish caught from the water which runs through her paintings.
Women, needless to say, are the protagonists in these images. Two paintings were placed together like diary entries, a testament to her being frightened by an old woman, and subsequently falling ill. In them, the woman, Fedorykha, emerges out of a crooked house in stark black-and-white; Maria and her chickens are trapped between the fence and the yard borders of yellow and blue - allusions, today, to the flag. In the next, she is tucked up in bed, only her head and two plaits poking out of the covers: ‘I was paralyzed. Then everything got better.’
Animals are welcome in Prymachenko’s house; here, they sit on her shelves or peer out of windows. People, by contrast, live most of their lives outside, challenging the binary of human/nature. On one double-sided work, we could find five men standing to feast in a lush green garden; on the reverse, two women conversing in an orchard, the sky lit STABILO pink. The artist’s works are marked by her use of vivid, even neon colours, fluorescents supplied by her foreign patrons.
For many artists, painting on both sides is a practical response to a scarcity of materials, and evidence of their process and socioeconomic status. Prymachenko’s subjects are normally quite different, but in one case, she duplicates the image of a woman rocking a pushchair with different colours – one vivid yellow, one lurid green. It’s playful; we could see her too testing or experimenting with how her visions manifest on the page. There are ‘authentic’ Ukrainian subjects and motifs but also, atypical orange fruits, and trees, which only highlight the plurality of her practice.
The lake that runs near the artist’s home appears in the many images; likewise, the apple tree planted by her hand. They’re visual sources of her and the village’s existence. Most of her works come untitled, or matter-of-factly named, for instance ‘A Pig Grazed’. Later, larger works have longer titles – ‘The Beast Eats the Lower Cherries to Prevent Anyone Else Eating Them’ – perhaps a sign of an artist growing in confidence, or more simply, slowing production in older age.
More drawings and writings can be found on the reverse; at the Saatchi Gallery, they were often scanned, and displayed next to the image. They give context to uncaptioned works, further details, like a diary, and evidence how art and life were not separate to her but entwined. It’s a delight to see her hand, and her use of the Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabet, a point of connection across the region of Europe.
Prymachenko painted daily, but some years were more prolific than others. The trauma of World War II, the loss of both her partner and her brother, the former lost fighting in Finland, the latter executed by the Nazis’, led to a brief break in her practice, until 1967. Whilst working as a widowed mother, she also educated children in her own school, and others in her local community; both her son and grandson would become artists too. The Saatchi space was light on information – much more can be found online – but clear is the intent to position Prymachenko’s work in the context of the preservation of cultural heritage and history in Ukraine.
Stark, at the end of the gallery, was a modern poster, boasting the architectural plans for an Art Residence and Museum of Maria Prymachenko. The proposed white, elongated eggbox sits stark atop the natural landscape, recalling the likes of Hilma af Klint’s Temple, or perhaps even the Benesse Art Site Naoshima, in Japan.
The new Museum is a product of the current conflict; though the Foundation has long collected her works, their local museum was burned down in February by ‘russians’ - it is unclear whether the lower-case-r was a mistake in the curation, or a political statement. It will be a place of strength,’ says Gnatiuk, ‘capable of welcoming guests from around the world after Ukraine's victory.’ Few of her personal belongings survived the fire – her easel, paint, and bed – and it’s unclear how many of her works did too. Of course, we read of the viburnum plant which remains outside her window, the Ukrainian symbol of life.
So the Foundation seeks to reconstruct the past, with a video re-enacting the artist’s daily life – not the first - and a ghostly AI-reproduced photograph of the artist. It’s a chilling conclusion to an exhibition filled with warmth and humour. This video – and all the installation photographs – were presented by Prymachenko’s great-granddaughter, Anastasiya. Whilst the artist was clearly comfortable with public display, we cannot say the same for the reproduction of her image, an executive decision by the Foundation, and the next generations.
Since the destruction of the museum, it has only been possible to see the artist’s paintings in white cube exhibitions, often in other countries, reflecting how the war with Russia has only strengthened Ukrainian national identity, and its place on the global stage. Indeed, the new Museum, a collaboration with architect Victoria Yakusha – a vocal ‘ambassador’ and preserver of Ukrainian cultural heritage - may not have come without it. Above all, her own generosity will ensure her legacy; she scarcely sold, but preferred to gift her works, many to friends and networks outside of Ukraine.
This critical engagement also encourages us to consider the intentions of the Saatchi Gallery when collaborating with the Foundation, and the Embassy of Ukraine. The artist has long been acclaimed in Ukraine, a recipient of national prizes, and well-represented in collections (and now, ironically, on Finland’s national aeroplanes). 2009, the one-hundredth anniversary of her birth, was marked as Prymachenko Year, marked with postage stamps and playgrounds.
But global media outlets (and even GB News) have seized on the chance to claim her in the context of our contemporary moment, reading her anti-war art in light of this particular conflict, one which commenced after the artist passed. They must be careful not to fall into anachronism, for the reality is, as always, more complex.
Her partner was a member of the Soviet Army, and she was well-respected by Russian journalists. Prymachenko was exhibited in and invited to Moscow to practice, an opportunity rejected only as she was mid-painting cycle. Her biographers suggest she was never a ‘political person’, for never depicting politicians; but this is to ignore how politics permeates her life and practice. (Some have read a hat on one of her beasts as a nod to Joseph Stalin’s cap, but it’s pure speculation.)
Her politics were global, but grounded in the local, her village just 30 kilometres from Chernobyl. Titles like ‘May that nuclear war be cursed!’ (1978) and ‘Mr Reagan, think about how heavy and heavy and unreasonable this Atom is’ (1986)’ speak to an altogether different and particular time – her bears aren’t necessarily Russian - and must not be conflated with contemporary political criticism, or efforts to decolonise museums. Indeed, there is nothing military about her depictions of the national army, a group bound by the strength of their folk traditions and culture, not their weapons.
Prymachenko was twice exhibited in the Venice Biennale 2022, and with good reason; her work certainly has renewed importance in light of the conflict. We should hope that this exhibition represents a rising interest and respect for Central and Eastern Europe, and that similar exhibitions of folk art from the Balkans, Baltics, or states not thrust in the global spotlight by war may soon follow. But so long as art markets launder Russian money, and Saatchi sells books of Soviet posters in the bookshop, it seems their pro-Ukraine politics will remain a visionary performance too.
‘I grazed geese under a willow tree and learned to draw with a stick in the sand.’
Maria Prymachenko (1909-1997) spent almost her entire life in rural Polissya, near Kyiv, rarely leaving her courtyard, let alone her village. Self-taught, her visionary paintings of brightly-coloured beasts and stylised landscapes were born of a vivid imagination and a lifelong love of art. But her works have long travelled beyond the borders of Bolotnya, the village where she was born and died.
Prymachenko left school after contracting polio, which left her with a physical impairment and a great sense of empathy towards both human and animal suffering. With her family at home, she trained in traditional Ukrainian crafts including embroidery, ceramics, and painting Easter eggs. In 1936, she was invited to join the Central Experimental Workshops at the Kyiv Museum of Ukrainian Art by the textile weaver Tatiana Flora and, in the same year, exhibited in the hall at the First Republican Exhibition of Folk Art. It was an exhibition which travelled to Moscow, and St. Petersburg, highlighting the exchange between Russia and Ukraine during the period of the Soviet Union.
Whilst the Soviet leader Stalin sought to suppress Ukrainian folk traditions, in Kyiv, they still flourished; As both a woman, and a peasant, she was perceived to pose particularly little threat. Here, she painted animals for the first time. Challenging her contemporary mythologisation or Balkanisation as a village-based fantasist, it was also here she first visited a zoo and began her engagement with global art and politics.
A number of successful exhibitions across the Soviet Union, in Warsaw, Sofia, Prague, as well as Canada and Japan, followed. Prymachenko was awarded a golden medal at the 1937 Paris World Fair, where Pablo Picasso showed Guernica (1937), and mythically remarked: ‘I bow down before the artistic miracle of this brilliant Ukrainian.’
At a recent Saatchi Gallery exhibition of her work, we could see only her paintings, originally conceived as illustrations for a children’s book. They reflected village life through the artist’s magical and ‘naïve’ lens; with no formal artistic education, Prymachenko is heralded as a pioneer – at one point, ‘the first’ – to work in primitivism and ‘folk art’.
The artist’s boldness was reflected in the curation; Natalia Gnatiuk, co-curator and partner of the Prymachenko Family Foundation, peppered her introduction with lyrical, even spiritual, phrasing. Her village may be small, but ‘life is bustling!’, with the stitching of wedding towels and textiles, sheep being herded, and fish caught from the water which runs through her paintings.
Women, needless to say, are the protagonists in these images. Two paintings were placed together like diary entries, a testament to her being frightened by an old woman, and subsequently falling ill. In them, the woman, Fedorykha, emerges out of a crooked house in stark black-and-white; Maria and her chickens are trapped between the fence and the yard borders of yellow and blue - allusions, today, to the flag. In the next, she is tucked up in bed, only her head and two plaits poking out of the covers: ‘I was paralyzed. Then everything got better.’
Animals are welcome in Prymachenko’s house; here, they sit on her shelves or peer out of windows. People, by contrast, live most of their lives outside, challenging the binary of human/nature. On one double-sided work, we could find five men standing to feast in a lush green garden; on the reverse, two women conversing in an orchard, the sky lit STABILO pink. The artist’s works are marked by her use of vivid, even neon colours, fluorescents supplied by her foreign patrons.
For many artists, painting on both sides is a practical response to a scarcity of materials, and evidence of their process and socioeconomic status. Prymachenko’s subjects are normally quite different, but in one case, she duplicates the image of a woman rocking a pushchair with different colours – one vivid yellow, one lurid green. It’s playful; we could see her too testing or experimenting with how her visions manifest on the page. There are ‘authentic’ Ukrainian subjects and motifs but also, atypical orange fruits, and trees, which only highlight the plurality of her practice.
The lake that runs near the artist’s home appears in the many images; likewise, the apple tree planted by her hand. They’re visual sources of her and the village’s existence. Most of her works come untitled, or matter-of-factly named, for instance ‘A Pig Grazed’. Later, larger works have longer titles – ‘The Beast Eats the Lower Cherries to Prevent Anyone Else Eating Them’ – perhaps a sign of an artist growing in confidence, or more simply, slowing production in older age.
More drawings and writings can be found on the reverse; at the Saatchi Gallery, they were often scanned, and displayed next to the image. They give context to uncaptioned works, further details, like a diary, and evidence how art and life were not separate to her but entwined. It’s a delight to see her hand, and her use of the Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabet, a point of connection across the region of Europe.
Prymachenko painted daily, but some years were more prolific than others. The trauma of World War II, the loss of both her partner and her brother, the former lost fighting in Finland, the latter executed by the Nazis’, led to a brief break in her practice, until 1967. Whilst working as a widowed mother, she also educated children in her own school, and others in her local community; both her son and grandson would become artists too. The Saatchi space was light on information – much more can be found online – but clear is the intent to position Prymachenko’s work in the context of the preservation of cultural heritage and history in Ukraine.
Stark, at the end of the gallery, was a modern poster, boasting the architectural plans for an Art Residence and Museum of Maria Prymachenko. The proposed white, elongated eggbox sits stark atop the natural landscape, recalling the likes of Hilma af Klint’s Temple, or perhaps even the Benesse Art Site Naoshima, in Japan.
The new Museum is a product of the current conflict; though the Foundation has long collected her works, their local museum was burned down in February by ‘russians’ - it is unclear whether the lower-case-r was a mistake in the curation, or a political statement. It will be a place of strength,’ says Gnatiuk, ‘capable of welcoming guests from around the world after Ukraine's victory.’ Few of her personal belongings survived the fire – her easel, paint, and bed – and it’s unclear how many of her works did too. Of course, we read of the viburnum plant which remains outside her window, the Ukrainian symbol of life.
So the Foundation seeks to reconstruct the past, with a video re-enacting the artist’s daily life – not the first - and a ghostly AI-reproduced photograph of the artist. It’s a chilling conclusion to an exhibition filled with warmth and humour. This video – and all the installation photographs – were presented by Prymachenko’s great-granddaughter, Anastasiya. Whilst the artist was clearly comfortable with public display, we cannot say the same for the reproduction of her image, an executive decision by the Foundation, and the next generations.
Since the destruction of the museum, it has only been possible to see the artist’s paintings in white cube exhibitions, often in other countries, reflecting how the war with Russia has only strengthened Ukrainian national identity, and its place on the global stage. Indeed, the new Museum, a collaboration with architect Victoria Yakusha – a vocal ‘ambassador’ and preserver of Ukrainian cultural heritage - may not have come without it. Above all, her own generosity will ensure her legacy; she scarcely sold, but preferred to gift her works, many to friends and networks outside of Ukraine.
This critical engagement also encourages us to consider the intentions of the Saatchi Gallery when collaborating with the Foundation, and the Embassy of Ukraine. The artist has long been acclaimed in Ukraine, a recipient of national prizes, and well-represented in collections (and now, ironically, on Finland’s national aeroplanes). 2009, the one-hundredth anniversary of her birth, was marked as Prymachenko Year, marked with postage stamps and playgrounds.
But global media outlets (and even GB News) have seized on the chance to claim her in the context of our contemporary moment, reading her anti-war art in light of this particular conflict, one which commenced after the artist passed. They must be careful not to fall into anachronism, for the reality is, as always, more complex.
Her partner was a member of the Soviet Army, and she was well-respected by Russian journalists. Prymachenko was exhibited in and invited to Moscow to practice, an opportunity rejected only as she was mid-painting cycle. Her biographers suggest she was never a ‘political person’, for never depicting politicians; but this is to ignore how politics permeates her life and practice. (Some have read a hat on one of her beasts as a nod to Joseph Stalin’s cap, but it’s pure speculation.)
Her politics were global, but grounded in the local, her village just 30 kilometres from Chernobyl. Titles like ‘May that nuclear war be cursed!’ (1978) and ‘Mr Reagan, think about how heavy and heavy and unreasonable this Atom is’ (1986)’ speak to an altogether different and particular time – her bears aren’t necessarily Russian - and must not be conflated with contemporary political criticism, or efforts to decolonise museums. Indeed, there is nothing military about her depictions of the national army, a group bound by the strength of their folk traditions and culture, not their weapons.
Prymachenko was twice exhibited in the Venice Biennale 2022, and with good reason; her work certainly has renewed importance in light of the conflict. We should hope that this exhibition represents a rising interest and respect for Central and Eastern Europe, and that similar exhibitions of folk art from the Balkans, Baltics, or states not thrust in the global spotlight by war may soon follow. But so long as art markets launder Russian money, and Saatchi sells books of Soviet posters in the bookshop, it seems their pro-Ukraine politics will remain a visionary performance too.
‘I grazed geese under a willow tree and learned to draw with a stick in the sand.’
Maria Prymachenko (1909-1997) spent almost her entire life in rural Polissya, near Kyiv, rarely leaving her courtyard, let alone her village. Self-taught, her visionary paintings of brightly-coloured beasts and stylised landscapes were born of a vivid imagination and a lifelong love of art. But her works have long travelled beyond the borders of Bolotnya, the village where she was born and died.
Prymachenko left school after contracting polio, which left her with a physical impairment and a great sense of empathy towards both human and animal suffering. With her family at home, she trained in traditional Ukrainian crafts including embroidery, ceramics, and painting Easter eggs. In 1936, she was invited to join the Central Experimental Workshops at the Kyiv Museum of Ukrainian Art by the textile weaver Tatiana Flora and, in the same year, exhibited in the hall at the First Republican Exhibition of Folk Art. It was an exhibition which travelled to Moscow, and St. Petersburg, highlighting the exchange between Russia and Ukraine during the period of the Soviet Union.
Whilst the Soviet leader Stalin sought to suppress Ukrainian folk traditions, in Kyiv, they still flourished; As both a woman, and a peasant, she was perceived to pose particularly little threat. Here, she painted animals for the first time. Challenging her contemporary mythologisation or Balkanisation as a village-based fantasist, it was also here she first visited a zoo and began her engagement with global art and politics.
A number of successful exhibitions across the Soviet Union, in Warsaw, Sofia, Prague, as well as Canada and Japan, followed. Prymachenko was awarded a golden medal at the 1937 Paris World Fair, where Pablo Picasso showed Guernica (1937), and mythically remarked: ‘I bow down before the artistic miracle of this brilliant Ukrainian.’
At a recent Saatchi Gallery exhibition of her work, we could see only her paintings, originally conceived as illustrations for a children’s book. They reflected village life through the artist’s magical and ‘naïve’ lens; with no formal artistic education, Prymachenko is heralded as a pioneer – at one point, ‘the first’ – to work in primitivism and ‘folk art’.
The artist’s boldness was reflected in the curation; Natalia Gnatiuk, co-curator and partner of the Prymachenko Family Foundation, peppered her introduction with lyrical, even spiritual, phrasing. Her village may be small, but ‘life is bustling!’, with the stitching of wedding towels and textiles, sheep being herded, and fish caught from the water which runs through her paintings.
Women, needless to say, are the protagonists in these images. Two paintings were placed together like diary entries, a testament to her being frightened by an old woman, and subsequently falling ill. In them, the woman, Fedorykha, emerges out of a crooked house in stark black-and-white; Maria and her chickens are trapped between the fence and the yard borders of yellow and blue - allusions, today, to the flag. In the next, she is tucked up in bed, only her head and two plaits poking out of the covers: ‘I was paralyzed. Then everything got better.’
Animals are welcome in Prymachenko’s house; here, they sit on her shelves or peer out of windows. People, by contrast, live most of their lives outside, challenging the binary of human/nature. On one double-sided work, we could find five men standing to feast in a lush green garden; on the reverse, two women conversing in an orchard, the sky lit STABILO pink. The artist’s works are marked by her use of vivid, even neon colours, fluorescents supplied by her foreign patrons.
For many artists, painting on both sides is a practical response to a scarcity of materials, and evidence of their process and socioeconomic status. Prymachenko’s subjects are normally quite different, but in one case, she duplicates the image of a woman rocking a pushchair with different colours – one vivid yellow, one lurid green. It’s playful; we could see her too testing or experimenting with how her visions manifest on the page. There are ‘authentic’ Ukrainian subjects and motifs but also, atypical orange fruits, and trees, which only highlight the plurality of her practice.
The lake that runs near the artist’s home appears in the many images; likewise, the apple tree planted by her hand. They’re visual sources of her and the village’s existence. Most of her works come untitled, or matter-of-factly named, for instance ‘A Pig Grazed’. Later, larger works have longer titles – ‘The Beast Eats the Lower Cherries to Prevent Anyone Else Eating Them’ – perhaps a sign of an artist growing in confidence, or more simply, slowing production in older age.
More drawings and writings can be found on the reverse; at the Saatchi Gallery, they were often scanned, and displayed next to the image. They give context to uncaptioned works, further details, like a diary, and evidence how art and life were not separate to her but entwined. It’s a delight to see her hand, and her use of the Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabet, a point of connection across the region of Europe.
Prymachenko painted daily, but some years were more prolific than others. The trauma of World War II, the loss of both her partner and her brother, the former lost fighting in Finland, the latter executed by the Nazis’, led to a brief break in her practice, until 1967. Whilst working as a widowed mother, she also educated children in her own school, and others in her local community; both her son and grandson would become artists too. The Saatchi space was light on information – much more can be found online – but clear is the intent to position Prymachenko’s work in the context of the preservation of cultural heritage and history in Ukraine.
Stark, at the end of the gallery, was a modern poster, boasting the architectural plans for an Art Residence and Museum of Maria Prymachenko. The proposed white, elongated eggbox sits stark atop the natural landscape, recalling the likes of Hilma af Klint’s Temple, or perhaps even the Benesse Art Site Naoshima, in Japan.
The new Museum is a product of the current conflict; though the Foundation has long collected her works, their local museum was burned down in February by ‘russians’ - it is unclear whether the lower-case-r was a mistake in the curation, or a political statement. It will be a place of strength,’ says Gnatiuk, ‘capable of welcoming guests from around the world after Ukraine's victory.’ Few of her personal belongings survived the fire – her easel, paint, and bed – and it’s unclear how many of her works did too. Of course, we read of the viburnum plant which remains outside her window, the Ukrainian symbol of life.
So the Foundation seeks to reconstruct the past, with a video re-enacting the artist’s daily life – not the first - and a ghostly AI-reproduced photograph of the artist. It’s a chilling conclusion to an exhibition filled with warmth and humour. This video – and all the installation photographs – were presented by Prymachenko’s great-granddaughter, Anastasiya. Whilst the artist was clearly comfortable with public display, we cannot say the same for the reproduction of her image, an executive decision by the Foundation, and the next generations.
Since the destruction of the museum, it has only been possible to see the artist’s paintings in white cube exhibitions, often in other countries, reflecting how the war with Russia has only strengthened Ukrainian national identity, and its place on the global stage. Indeed, the new Museum, a collaboration with architect Victoria Yakusha – a vocal ‘ambassador’ and preserver of Ukrainian cultural heritage - may not have come without it. Above all, her own generosity will ensure her legacy; she scarcely sold, but preferred to gift her works, many to friends and networks outside of Ukraine.
This critical engagement also encourages us to consider the intentions of the Saatchi Gallery when collaborating with the Foundation, and the Embassy of Ukraine. The artist has long been acclaimed in Ukraine, a recipient of national prizes, and well-represented in collections (and now, ironically, on Finland’s national aeroplanes). 2009, the one-hundredth anniversary of her birth, was marked as Prymachenko Year, marked with postage stamps and playgrounds.
But global media outlets (and even GB News) have seized on the chance to claim her in the context of our contemporary moment, reading her anti-war art in light of this particular conflict, one which commenced after the artist passed. They must be careful not to fall into anachronism, for the reality is, as always, more complex.
Her partner was a member of the Soviet Army, and she was well-respected by Russian journalists. Prymachenko was exhibited in and invited to Moscow to practice, an opportunity rejected only as she was mid-painting cycle. Her biographers suggest she was never a ‘political person’, for never depicting politicians; but this is to ignore how politics permeates her life and practice. (Some have read a hat on one of her beasts as a nod to Joseph Stalin’s cap, but it’s pure speculation.)
Her politics were global, but grounded in the local, her village just 30 kilometres from Chernobyl. Titles like ‘May that nuclear war be cursed!’ (1978) and ‘Mr Reagan, think about how heavy and heavy and unreasonable this Atom is’ (1986)’ speak to an altogether different and particular time – her bears aren’t necessarily Russian - and must not be conflated with contemporary political criticism, or efforts to decolonise museums. Indeed, there is nothing military about her depictions of the national army, a group bound by the strength of their folk traditions and culture, not their weapons.
Prymachenko was twice exhibited in the Venice Biennale 2022, and with good reason; her work certainly has renewed importance in light of the conflict. We should hope that this exhibition represents a rising interest and respect for Central and Eastern Europe, and that similar exhibitions of folk art from the Balkans, Baltics, or states not thrust in the global spotlight by war may soon follow. But so long as art markets launder Russian money, and Saatchi sells books of Soviet posters in the bookshop, it seems their pro-Ukraine politics will remain a visionary performance too.
‘I grazed geese under a willow tree and learned to draw with a stick in the sand.’
Maria Prymachenko (1909-1997) spent almost her entire life in rural Polissya, near Kyiv, rarely leaving her courtyard, let alone her village. Self-taught, her visionary paintings of brightly-coloured beasts and stylised landscapes were born of a vivid imagination and a lifelong love of art. But her works have long travelled beyond the borders of Bolotnya, the village where she was born and died.
Prymachenko left school after contracting polio, which left her with a physical impairment and a great sense of empathy towards both human and animal suffering. With her family at home, she trained in traditional Ukrainian crafts including embroidery, ceramics, and painting Easter eggs. In 1936, she was invited to join the Central Experimental Workshops at the Kyiv Museum of Ukrainian Art by the textile weaver Tatiana Flora and, in the same year, exhibited in the hall at the First Republican Exhibition of Folk Art. It was an exhibition which travelled to Moscow, and St. Petersburg, highlighting the exchange between Russia and Ukraine during the period of the Soviet Union.
Whilst the Soviet leader Stalin sought to suppress Ukrainian folk traditions, in Kyiv, they still flourished; As both a woman, and a peasant, she was perceived to pose particularly little threat. Here, she painted animals for the first time. Challenging her contemporary mythologisation or Balkanisation as a village-based fantasist, it was also here she first visited a zoo and began her engagement with global art and politics.
A number of successful exhibitions across the Soviet Union, in Warsaw, Sofia, Prague, as well as Canada and Japan, followed. Prymachenko was awarded a golden medal at the 1937 Paris World Fair, where Pablo Picasso showed Guernica (1937), and mythically remarked: ‘I bow down before the artistic miracle of this brilliant Ukrainian.’
At a recent Saatchi Gallery exhibition of her work, we could see only her paintings, originally conceived as illustrations for a children’s book. They reflected village life through the artist’s magical and ‘naïve’ lens; with no formal artistic education, Prymachenko is heralded as a pioneer – at one point, ‘the first’ – to work in primitivism and ‘folk art’.
The artist’s boldness was reflected in the curation; Natalia Gnatiuk, co-curator and partner of the Prymachenko Family Foundation, peppered her introduction with lyrical, even spiritual, phrasing. Her village may be small, but ‘life is bustling!’, with the stitching of wedding towels and textiles, sheep being herded, and fish caught from the water which runs through her paintings.
Women, needless to say, are the protagonists in these images. Two paintings were placed together like diary entries, a testament to her being frightened by an old woman, and subsequently falling ill. In them, the woman, Fedorykha, emerges out of a crooked house in stark black-and-white; Maria and her chickens are trapped between the fence and the yard borders of yellow and blue - allusions, today, to the flag. In the next, she is tucked up in bed, only her head and two plaits poking out of the covers: ‘I was paralyzed. Then everything got better.’
Animals are welcome in Prymachenko’s house; here, they sit on her shelves or peer out of windows. People, by contrast, live most of their lives outside, challenging the binary of human/nature. On one double-sided work, we could find five men standing to feast in a lush green garden; on the reverse, two women conversing in an orchard, the sky lit STABILO pink. The artist’s works are marked by her use of vivid, even neon colours, fluorescents supplied by her foreign patrons.
For many artists, painting on both sides is a practical response to a scarcity of materials, and evidence of their process and socioeconomic status. Prymachenko’s subjects are normally quite different, but in one case, she duplicates the image of a woman rocking a pushchair with different colours – one vivid yellow, one lurid green. It’s playful; we could see her too testing or experimenting with how her visions manifest on the page. There are ‘authentic’ Ukrainian subjects and motifs but also, atypical orange fruits, and trees, which only highlight the plurality of her practice.
The lake that runs near the artist’s home appears in the many images; likewise, the apple tree planted by her hand. They’re visual sources of her and the village’s existence. Most of her works come untitled, or matter-of-factly named, for instance ‘A Pig Grazed’. Later, larger works have longer titles – ‘The Beast Eats the Lower Cherries to Prevent Anyone Else Eating Them’ – perhaps a sign of an artist growing in confidence, or more simply, slowing production in older age.
More drawings and writings can be found on the reverse; at the Saatchi Gallery, they were often scanned, and displayed next to the image. They give context to uncaptioned works, further details, like a diary, and evidence how art and life were not separate to her but entwined. It’s a delight to see her hand, and her use of the Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabet, a point of connection across the region of Europe.
Prymachenko painted daily, but some years were more prolific than others. The trauma of World War II, the loss of both her partner and her brother, the former lost fighting in Finland, the latter executed by the Nazis’, led to a brief break in her practice, until 1967. Whilst working as a widowed mother, she also educated children in her own school, and others in her local community; both her son and grandson would become artists too. The Saatchi space was light on information – much more can be found online – but clear is the intent to position Prymachenko’s work in the context of the preservation of cultural heritage and history in Ukraine.
Stark, at the end of the gallery, was a modern poster, boasting the architectural plans for an Art Residence and Museum of Maria Prymachenko. The proposed white, elongated eggbox sits stark atop the natural landscape, recalling the likes of Hilma af Klint’s Temple, or perhaps even the Benesse Art Site Naoshima, in Japan.
The new Museum is a product of the current conflict; though the Foundation has long collected her works, their local museum was burned down in February by ‘russians’ - it is unclear whether the lower-case-r was a mistake in the curation, or a political statement. It will be a place of strength,’ says Gnatiuk, ‘capable of welcoming guests from around the world after Ukraine's victory.’ Few of her personal belongings survived the fire – her easel, paint, and bed – and it’s unclear how many of her works did too. Of course, we read of the viburnum plant which remains outside her window, the Ukrainian symbol of life.
So the Foundation seeks to reconstruct the past, with a video re-enacting the artist’s daily life – not the first - and a ghostly AI-reproduced photograph of the artist. It’s a chilling conclusion to an exhibition filled with warmth and humour. This video – and all the installation photographs – were presented by Prymachenko’s great-granddaughter, Anastasiya. Whilst the artist was clearly comfortable with public display, we cannot say the same for the reproduction of her image, an executive decision by the Foundation, and the next generations.
Since the destruction of the museum, it has only been possible to see the artist’s paintings in white cube exhibitions, often in other countries, reflecting how the war with Russia has only strengthened Ukrainian national identity, and its place on the global stage. Indeed, the new Museum, a collaboration with architect Victoria Yakusha – a vocal ‘ambassador’ and preserver of Ukrainian cultural heritage - may not have come without it. Above all, her own generosity will ensure her legacy; she scarcely sold, but preferred to gift her works, many to friends and networks outside of Ukraine.
This critical engagement also encourages us to consider the intentions of the Saatchi Gallery when collaborating with the Foundation, and the Embassy of Ukraine. The artist has long been acclaimed in Ukraine, a recipient of national prizes, and well-represented in collections (and now, ironically, on Finland’s national aeroplanes). 2009, the one-hundredth anniversary of her birth, was marked as Prymachenko Year, marked with postage stamps and playgrounds.
But global media outlets (and even GB News) have seized on the chance to claim her in the context of our contemporary moment, reading her anti-war art in light of this particular conflict, one which commenced after the artist passed. They must be careful not to fall into anachronism, for the reality is, as always, more complex.
Her partner was a member of the Soviet Army, and she was well-respected by Russian journalists. Prymachenko was exhibited in and invited to Moscow to practice, an opportunity rejected only as she was mid-painting cycle. Her biographers suggest she was never a ‘political person’, for never depicting politicians; but this is to ignore how politics permeates her life and practice. (Some have read a hat on one of her beasts as a nod to Joseph Stalin’s cap, but it’s pure speculation.)
Her politics were global, but grounded in the local, her village just 30 kilometres from Chernobyl. Titles like ‘May that nuclear war be cursed!’ (1978) and ‘Mr Reagan, think about how heavy and heavy and unreasonable this Atom is’ (1986)’ speak to an altogether different and particular time – her bears aren’t necessarily Russian - and must not be conflated with contemporary political criticism, or efforts to decolonise museums. Indeed, there is nothing military about her depictions of the national army, a group bound by the strength of their folk traditions and culture, not their weapons.
Prymachenko was twice exhibited in the Venice Biennale 2022, and with good reason; her work certainly has renewed importance in light of the conflict. We should hope that this exhibition represents a rising interest and respect for Central and Eastern Europe, and that similar exhibitions of folk art from the Balkans, Baltics, or states not thrust in the global spotlight by war may soon follow. But so long as art markets launder Russian money, and Saatchi sells books of Soviet posters in the bookshop, it seems their pro-Ukraine politics will remain a visionary performance too.
‘I grazed geese under a willow tree and learned to draw with a stick in the sand.’
Maria Prymachenko (1909-1997) spent almost her entire life in rural Polissya, near Kyiv, rarely leaving her courtyard, let alone her village. Self-taught, her visionary paintings of brightly-coloured beasts and stylised landscapes were born of a vivid imagination and a lifelong love of art. But her works have long travelled beyond the borders of Bolotnya, the village where she was born and died.
Prymachenko left school after contracting polio, which left her with a physical impairment and a great sense of empathy towards both human and animal suffering. With her family at home, she trained in traditional Ukrainian crafts including embroidery, ceramics, and painting Easter eggs. In 1936, she was invited to join the Central Experimental Workshops at the Kyiv Museum of Ukrainian Art by the textile weaver Tatiana Flora and, in the same year, exhibited in the hall at the First Republican Exhibition of Folk Art. It was an exhibition which travelled to Moscow, and St. Petersburg, highlighting the exchange between Russia and Ukraine during the period of the Soviet Union.
Whilst the Soviet leader Stalin sought to suppress Ukrainian folk traditions, in Kyiv, they still flourished; As both a woman, and a peasant, she was perceived to pose particularly little threat. Here, she painted animals for the first time. Challenging her contemporary mythologisation or Balkanisation as a village-based fantasist, it was also here she first visited a zoo and began her engagement with global art and politics.
A number of successful exhibitions across the Soviet Union, in Warsaw, Sofia, Prague, as well as Canada and Japan, followed. Prymachenko was awarded a golden medal at the 1937 Paris World Fair, where Pablo Picasso showed Guernica (1937), and mythically remarked: ‘I bow down before the artistic miracle of this brilliant Ukrainian.’
At a recent Saatchi Gallery exhibition of her work, we could see only her paintings, originally conceived as illustrations for a children’s book. They reflected village life through the artist’s magical and ‘naïve’ lens; with no formal artistic education, Prymachenko is heralded as a pioneer – at one point, ‘the first’ – to work in primitivism and ‘folk art’.
The artist’s boldness was reflected in the curation; Natalia Gnatiuk, co-curator and partner of the Prymachenko Family Foundation, peppered her introduction with lyrical, even spiritual, phrasing. Her village may be small, but ‘life is bustling!’, with the stitching of wedding towels and textiles, sheep being herded, and fish caught from the water which runs through her paintings.
Women, needless to say, are the protagonists in these images. Two paintings were placed together like diary entries, a testament to her being frightened by an old woman, and subsequently falling ill. In them, the woman, Fedorykha, emerges out of a crooked house in stark black-and-white; Maria and her chickens are trapped between the fence and the yard borders of yellow and blue - allusions, today, to the flag. In the next, she is tucked up in bed, only her head and two plaits poking out of the covers: ‘I was paralyzed. Then everything got better.’
Animals are welcome in Prymachenko’s house; here, they sit on her shelves or peer out of windows. People, by contrast, live most of their lives outside, challenging the binary of human/nature. On one double-sided work, we could find five men standing to feast in a lush green garden; on the reverse, two women conversing in an orchard, the sky lit STABILO pink. The artist’s works are marked by her use of vivid, even neon colours, fluorescents supplied by her foreign patrons.
For many artists, painting on both sides is a practical response to a scarcity of materials, and evidence of their process and socioeconomic status. Prymachenko’s subjects are normally quite different, but in one case, she duplicates the image of a woman rocking a pushchair with different colours – one vivid yellow, one lurid green. It’s playful; we could see her too testing or experimenting with how her visions manifest on the page. There are ‘authentic’ Ukrainian subjects and motifs but also, atypical orange fruits, and trees, which only highlight the plurality of her practice.
The lake that runs near the artist’s home appears in the many images; likewise, the apple tree planted by her hand. They’re visual sources of her and the village’s existence. Most of her works come untitled, or matter-of-factly named, for instance ‘A Pig Grazed’. Later, larger works have longer titles – ‘The Beast Eats the Lower Cherries to Prevent Anyone Else Eating Them’ – perhaps a sign of an artist growing in confidence, or more simply, slowing production in older age.
More drawings and writings can be found on the reverse; at the Saatchi Gallery, they were often scanned, and displayed next to the image. They give context to uncaptioned works, further details, like a diary, and evidence how art and life were not separate to her but entwined. It’s a delight to see her hand, and her use of the Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabet, a point of connection across the region of Europe.
Prymachenko painted daily, but some years were more prolific than others. The trauma of World War II, the loss of both her partner and her brother, the former lost fighting in Finland, the latter executed by the Nazis’, led to a brief break in her practice, until 1967. Whilst working as a widowed mother, she also educated children in her own school, and others in her local community; both her son and grandson would become artists too. The Saatchi space was light on information – much more can be found online – but clear is the intent to position Prymachenko’s work in the context of the preservation of cultural heritage and history in Ukraine.
Stark, at the end of the gallery, was a modern poster, boasting the architectural plans for an Art Residence and Museum of Maria Prymachenko. The proposed white, elongated eggbox sits stark atop the natural landscape, recalling the likes of Hilma af Klint’s Temple, or perhaps even the Benesse Art Site Naoshima, in Japan.
The new Museum is a product of the current conflict; though the Foundation has long collected her works, their local museum was burned down in February by ‘russians’ - it is unclear whether the lower-case-r was a mistake in the curation, or a political statement. It will be a place of strength,’ says Gnatiuk, ‘capable of welcoming guests from around the world after Ukraine's victory.’ Few of her personal belongings survived the fire – her easel, paint, and bed – and it’s unclear how many of her works did too. Of course, we read of the viburnum plant which remains outside her window, the Ukrainian symbol of life.
So the Foundation seeks to reconstruct the past, with a video re-enacting the artist’s daily life – not the first - and a ghostly AI-reproduced photograph of the artist. It’s a chilling conclusion to an exhibition filled with warmth and humour. This video – and all the installation photographs – were presented by Prymachenko’s great-granddaughter, Anastasiya. Whilst the artist was clearly comfortable with public display, we cannot say the same for the reproduction of her image, an executive decision by the Foundation, and the next generations.
Since the destruction of the museum, it has only been possible to see the artist’s paintings in white cube exhibitions, often in other countries, reflecting how the war with Russia has only strengthened Ukrainian national identity, and its place on the global stage. Indeed, the new Museum, a collaboration with architect Victoria Yakusha – a vocal ‘ambassador’ and preserver of Ukrainian cultural heritage - may not have come without it. Above all, her own generosity will ensure her legacy; she scarcely sold, but preferred to gift her works, many to friends and networks outside of Ukraine.
This critical engagement also encourages us to consider the intentions of the Saatchi Gallery when collaborating with the Foundation, and the Embassy of Ukraine. The artist has long been acclaimed in Ukraine, a recipient of national prizes, and well-represented in collections (and now, ironically, on Finland’s national aeroplanes). 2009, the one-hundredth anniversary of her birth, was marked as Prymachenko Year, marked with postage stamps and playgrounds.
But global media outlets (and even GB News) have seized on the chance to claim her in the context of our contemporary moment, reading her anti-war art in light of this particular conflict, one which commenced after the artist passed. They must be careful not to fall into anachronism, for the reality is, as always, more complex.
Her partner was a member of the Soviet Army, and she was well-respected by Russian journalists. Prymachenko was exhibited in and invited to Moscow to practice, an opportunity rejected only as she was mid-painting cycle. Her biographers suggest she was never a ‘political person’, for never depicting politicians; but this is to ignore how politics permeates her life and practice. (Some have read a hat on one of her beasts as a nod to Joseph Stalin’s cap, but it’s pure speculation.)
Her politics were global, but grounded in the local, her village just 30 kilometres from Chernobyl. Titles like ‘May that nuclear war be cursed!’ (1978) and ‘Mr Reagan, think about how heavy and heavy and unreasonable this Atom is’ (1986)’ speak to an altogether different and particular time – her bears aren’t necessarily Russian - and must not be conflated with contemporary political criticism, or efforts to decolonise museums. Indeed, there is nothing military about her depictions of the national army, a group bound by the strength of their folk traditions and culture, not their weapons.
Prymachenko was twice exhibited in the Venice Biennale 2022, and with good reason; her work certainly has renewed importance in light of the conflict. We should hope that this exhibition represents a rising interest and respect for Central and Eastern Europe, and that similar exhibitions of folk art from the Balkans, Baltics, or states not thrust in the global spotlight by war may soon follow. But so long as art markets launder Russian money, and Saatchi sells books of Soviet posters in the bookshop, it seems their pro-Ukraine politics will remain a visionary performance too.
‘I grazed geese under a willow tree and learned to draw with a stick in the sand.’
Maria Prymachenko (1909-1997) spent almost her entire life in rural Polissya, near Kyiv, rarely leaving her courtyard, let alone her village. Self-taught, her visionary paintings of brightly-coloured beasts and stylised landscapes were born of a vivid imagination and a lifelong love of art. But her works have long travelled beyond the borders of Bolotnya, the village where she was born and died.
Prymachenko left school after contracting polio, which left her with a physical impairment and a great sense of empathy towards both human and animal suffering. With her family at home, she trained in traditional Ukrainian crafts including embroidery, ceramics, and painting Easter eggs. In 1936, she was invited to join the Central Experimental Workshops at the Kyiv Museum of Ukrainian Art by the textile weaver Tatiana Flora and, in the same year, exhibited in the hall at the First Republican Exhibition of Folk Art. It was an exhibition which travelled to Moscow, and St. Petersburg, highlighting the exchange between Russia and Ukraine during the period of the Soviet Union.
Whilst the Soviet leader Stalin sought to suppress Ukrainian folk traditions, in Kyiv, they still flourished; As both a woman, and a peasant, she was perceived to pose particularly little threat. Here, she painted animals for the first time. Challenging her contemporary mythologisation or Balkanisation as a village-based fantasist, it was also here she first visited a zoo and began her engagement with global art and politics.
A number of successful exhibitions across the Soviet Union, in Warsaw, Sofia, Prague, as well as Canada and Japan, followed. Prymachenko was awarded a golden medal at the 1937 Paris World Fair, where Pablo Picasso showed Guernica (1937), and mythically remarked: ‘I bow down before the artistic miracle of this brilliant Ukrainian.’
At a recent Saatchi Gallery exhibition of her work, we could see only her paintings, originally conceived as illustrations for a children’s book. They reflected village life through the artist’s magical and ‘naïve’ lens; with no formal artistic education, Prymachenko is heralded as a pioneer – at one point, ‘the first’ – to work in primitivism and ‘folk art’.
The artist’s boldness was reflected in the curation; Natalia Gnatiuk, co-curator and partner of the Prymachenko Family Foundation, peppered her introduction with lyrical, even spiritual, phrasing. Her village may be small, but ‘life is bustling!’, with the stitching of wedding towels and textiles, sheep being herded, and fish caught from the water which runs through her paintings.
Women, needless to say, are the protagonists in these images. Two paintings were placed together like diary entries, a testament to her being frightened by an old woman, and subsequently falling ill. In them, the woman, Fedorykha, emerges out of a crooked house in stark black-and-white; Maria and her chickens are trapped between the fence and the yard borders of yellow and blue - allusions, today, to the flag. In the next, she is tucked up in bed, only her head and two plaits poking out of the covers: ‘I was paralyzed. Then everything got better.’
Animals are welcome in Prymachenko’s house; here, they sit on her shelves or peer out of windows. People, by contrast, live most of their lives outside, challenging the binary of human/nature. On one double-sided work, we could find five men standing to feast in a lush green garden; on the reverse, two women conversing in an orchard, the sky lit STABILO pink. The artist’s works are marked by her use of vivid, even neon colours, fluorescents supplied by her foreign patrons.
For many artists, painting on both sides is a practical response to a scarcity of materials, and evidence of their process and socioeconomic status. Prymachenko’s subjects are normally quite different, but in one case, she duplicates the image of a woman rocking a pushchair with different colours – one vivid yellow, one lurid green. It’s playful; we could see her too testing or experimenting with how her visions manifest on the page. There are ‘authentic’ Ukrainian subjects and motifs but also, atypical orange fruits, and trees, which only highlight the plurality of her practice.
The lake that runs near the artist’s home appears in the many images; likewise, the apple tree planted by her hand. They’re visual sources of her and the village’s existence. Most of her works come untitled, or matter-of-factly named, for instance ‘A Pig Grazed’. Later, larger works have longer titles – ‘The Beast Eats the Lower Cherries to Prevent Anyone Else Eating Them’ – perhaps a sign of an artist growing in confidence, or more simply, slowing production in older age.
More drawings and writings can be found on the reverse; at the Saatchi Gallery, they were often scanned, and displayed next to the image. They give context to uncaptioned works, further details, like a diary, and evidence how art and life were not separate to her but entwined. It’s a delight to see her hand, and her use of the Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabet, a point of connection across the region of Europe.
Prymachenko painted daily, but some years were more prolific than others. The trauma of World War II, the loss of both her partner and her brother, the former lost fighting in Finland, the latter executed by the Nazis’, led to a brief break in her practice, until 1967. Whilst working as a widowed mother, she also educated children in her own school, and others in her local community; both her son and grandson would become artists too. The Saatchi space was light on information – much more can be found online – but clear is the intent to position Prymachenko’s work in the context of the preservation of cultural heritage and history in Ukraine.
Stark, at the end of the gallery, was a modern poster, boasting the architectural plans for an Art Residence and Museum of Maria Prymachenko. The proposed white, elongated eggbox sits stark atop the natural landscape, recalling the likes of Hilma af Klint’s Temple, or perhaps even the Benesse Art Site Naoshima, in Japan.
The new Museum is a product of the current conflict; though the Foundation has long collected her works, their local museum was burned down in February by ‘russians’ - it is unclear whether the lower-case-r was a mistake in the curation, or a political statement. It will be a place of strength,’ says Gnatiuk, ‘capable of welcoming guests from around the world after Ukraine's victory.’ Few of her personal belongings survived the fire – her easel, paint, and bed – and it’s unclear how many of her works did too. Of course, we read of the viburnum plant which remains outside her window, the Ukrainian symbol of life.
So the Foundation seeks to reconstruct the past, with a video re-enacting the artist’s daily life – not the first - and a ghostly AI-reproduced photograph of the artist. It’s a chilling conclusion to an exhibition filled with warmth and humour. This video – and all the installation photographs – were presented by Prymachenko’s great-granddaughter, Anastasiya. Whilst the artist was clearly comfortable with public display, we cannot say the same for the reproduction of her image, an executive decision by the Foundation, and the next generations.
Since the destruction of the museum, it has only been possible to see the artist’s paintings in white cube exhibitions, often in other countries, reflecting how the war with Russia has only strengthened Ukrainian national identity, and its place on the global stage. Indeed, the new Museum, a collaboration with architect Victoria Yakusha – a vocal ‘ambassador’ and preserver of Ukrainian cultural heritage - may not have come without it. Above all, her own generosity will ensure her legacy; she scarcely sold, but preferred to gift her works, many to friends and networks outside of Ukraine.
This critical engagement also encourages us to consider the intentions of the Saatchi Gallery when collaborating with the Foundation, and the Embassy of Ukraine. The artist has long been acclaimed in Ukraine, a recipient of national prizes, and well-represented in collections (and now, ironically, on Finland’s national aeroplanes). 2009, the one-hundredth anniversary of her birth, was marked as Prymachenko Year, marked with postage stamps and playgrounds.
But global media outlets (and even GB News) have seized on the chance to claim her in the context of our contemporary moment, reading her anti-war art in light of this particular conflict, one which commenced after the artist passed. They must be careful not to fall into anachronism, for the reality is, as always, more complex.
Her partner was a member of the Soviet Army, and she was well-respected by Russian journalists. Prymachenko was exhibited in and invited to Moscow to practice, an opportunity rejected only as she was mid-painting cycle. Her biographers suggest she was never a ‘political person’, for never depicting politicians; but this is to ignore how politics permeates her life and practice. (Some have read a hat on one of her beasts as a nod to Joseph Stalin’s cap, but it’s pure speculation.)
Her politics were global, but grounded in the local, her village just 30 kilometres from Chernobyl. Titles like ‘May that nuclear war be cursed!’ (1978) and ‘Mr Reagan, think about how heavy and heavy and unreasonable this Atom is’ (1986)’ speak to an altogether different and particular time – her bears aren’t necessarily Russian - and must not be conflated with contemporary political criticism, or efforts to decolonise museums. Indeed, there is nothing military about her depictions of the national army, a group bound by the strength of their folk traditions and culture, not their weapons.
Prymachenko was twice exhibited in the Venice Biennale 2022, and with good reason; her work certainly has renewed importance in light of the conflict. We should hope that this exhibition represents a rising interest and respect for Central and Eastern Europe, and that similar exhibitions of folk art from the Balkans, Baltics, or states not thrust in the global spotlight by war may soon follow. But so long as art markets launder Russian money, and Saatchi sells books of Soviet posters in the bookshop, it seems their pro-Ukraine politics will remain a visionary performance too.
‘I grazed geese under a willow tree and learned to draw with a stick in the sand.’
Maria Prymachenko (1909-1997) spent almost her entire life in rural Polissya, near Kyiv, rarely leaving her courtyard, let alone her village. Self-taught, her visionary paintings of brightly-coloured beasts and stylised landscapes were born of a vivid imagination and a lifelong love of art. But her works have long travelled beyond the borders of Bolotnya, the village where she was born and died.
Prymachenko left school after contracting polio, which left her with a physical impairment and a great sense of empathy towards both human and animal suffering. With her family at home, she trained in traditional Ukrainian crafts including embroidery, ceramics, and painting Easter eggs. In 1936, she was invited to join the Central Experimental Workshops at the Kyiv Museum of Ukrainian Art by the textile weaver Tatiana Flora and, in the same year, exhibited in the hall at the First Republican Exhibition of Folk Art. It was an exhibition which travelled to Moscow, and St. Petersburg, highlighting the exchange between Russia and Ukraine during the period of the Soviet Union.
Whilst the Soviet leader Stalin sought to suppress Ukrainian folk traditions, in Kyiv, they still flourished; As both a woman, and a peasant, she was perceived to pose particularly little threat. Here, she painted animals for the first time. Challenging her contemporary mythologisation or Balkanisation as a village-based fantasist, it was also here she first visited a zoo and began her engagement with global art and politics.
A number of successful exhibitions across the Soviet Union, in Warsaw, Sofia, Prague, as well as Canada and Japan, followed. Prymachenko was awarded a golden medal at the 1937 Paris World Fair, where Pablo Picasso showed Guernica (1937), and mythically remarked: ‘I bow down before the artistic miracle of this brilliant Ukrainian.’
At a recent Saatchi Gallery exhibition of her work, we could see only her paintings, originally conceived as illustrations for a children’s book. They reflected village life through the artist’s magical and ‘naïve’ lens; with no formal artistic education, Prymachenko is heralded as a pioneer – at one point, ‘the first’ – to work in primitivism and ‘folk art’.
The artist’s boldness was reflected in the curation; Natalia Gnatiuk, co-curator and partner of the Prymachenko Family Foundation, peppered her introduction with lyrical, even spiritual, phrasing. Her village may be small, but ‘life is bustling!’, with the stitching of wedding towels and textiles, sheep being herded, and fish caught from the water which runs through her paintings.
Women, needless to say, are the protagonists in these images. Two paintings were placed together like diary entries, a testament to her being frightened by an old woman, and subsequently falling ill. In them, the woman, Fedorykha, emerges out of a crooked house in stark black-and-white; Maria and her chickens are trapped between the fence and the yard borders of yellow and blue - allusions, today, to the flag. In the next, she is tucked up in bed, only her head and two plaits poking out of the covers: ‘I was paralyzed. Then everything got better.’
Animals are welcome in Prymachenko’s house; here, they sit on her shelves or peer out of windows. People, by contrast, live most of their lives outside, challenging the binary of human/nature. On one double-sided work, we could find five men standing to feast in a lush green garden; on the reverse, two women conversing in an orchard, the sky lit STABILO pink. The artist’s works are marked by her use of vivid, even neon colours, fluorescents supplied by her foreign patrons.
For many artists, painting on both sides is a practical response to a scarcity of materials, and evidence of their process and socioeconomic status. Prymachenko’s subjects are normally quite different, but in one case, she duplicates the image of a woman rocking a pushchair with different colours – one vivid yellow, one lurid green. It’s playful; we could see her too testing or experimenting with how her visions manifest on the page. There are ‘authentic’ Ukrainian subjects and motifs but also, atypical orange fruits, and trees, which only highlight the plurality of her practice.
The lake that runs near the artist’s home appears in the many images; likewise, the apple tree planted by her hand. They’re visual sources of her and the village’s existence. Most of her works come untitled, or matter-of-factly named, for instance ‘A Pig Grazed’. Later, larger works have longer titles – ‘The Beast Eats the Lower Cherries to Prevent Anyone Else Eating Them’ – perhaps a sign of an artist growing in confidence, or more simply, slowing production in older age.
More drawings and writings can be found on the reverse; at the Saatchi Gallery, they were often scanned, and displayed next to the image. They give context to uncaptioned works, further details, like a diary, and evidence how art and life were not separate to her but entwined. It’s a delight to see her hand, and her use of the Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabet, a point of connection across the region of Europe.
Prymachenko painted daily, but some years were more prolific than others. The trauma of World War II, the loss of both her partner and her brother, the former lost fighting in Finland, the latter executed by the Nazis’, led to a brief break in her practice, until 1967. Whilst working as a widowed mother, she also educated children in her own school, and others in her local community; both her son and grandson would become artists too. The Saatchi space was light on information – much more can be found online – but clear is the intent to position Prymachenko’s work in the context of the preservation of cultural heritage and history in Ukraine.
Stark, at the end of the gallery, was a modern poster, boasting the architectural plans for an Art Residence and Museum of Maria Prymachenko. The proposed white, elongated eggbox sits stark atop the natural landscape, recalling the likes of Hilma af Klint’s Temple, or perhaps even the Benesse Art Site Naoshima, in Japan.
The new Museum is a product of the current conflict; though the Foundation has long collected her works, their local museum was burned down in February by ‘russians’ - it is unclear whether the lower-case-r was a mistake in the curation, or a political statement. It will be a place of strength,’ says Gnatiuk, ‘capable of welcoming guests from around the world after Ukraine's victory.’ Few of her personal belongings survived the fire – her easel, paint, and bed – and it’s unclear how many of her works did too. Of course, we read of the viburnum plant which remains outside her window, the Ukrainian symbol of life.
So the Foundation seeks to reconstruct the past, with a video re-enacting the artist’s daily life – not the first - and a ghostly AI-reproduced photograph of the artist. It’s a chilling conclusion to an exhibition filled with warmth and humour. This video – and all the installation photographs – were presented by Prymachenko’s great-granddaughter, Anastasiya. Whilst the artist was clearly comfortable with public display, we cannot say the same for the reproduction of her image, an executive decision by the Foundation, and the next generations.
Since the destruction of the museum, it has only been possible to see the artist’s paintings in white cube exhibitions, often in other countries, reflecting how the war with Russia has only strengthened Ukrainian national identity, and its place on the global stage. Indeed, the new Museum, a collaboration with architect Victoria Yakusha – a vocal ‘ambassador’ and preserver of Ukrainian cultural heritage - may not have come without it. Above all, her own generosity will ensure her legacy; she scarcely sold, but preferred to gift her works, many to friends and networks outside of Ukraine.
This critical engagement also encourages us to consider the intentions of the Saatchi Gallery when collaborating with the Foundation, and the Embassy of Ukraine. The artist has long been acclaimed in Ukraine, a recipient of national prizes, and well-represented in collections (and now, ironically, on Finland’s national aeroplanes). 2009, the one-hundredth anniversary of her birth, was marked as Prymachenko Year, marked with postage stamps and playgrounds.
But global media outlets (and even GB News) have seized on the chance to claim her in the context of our contemporary moment, reading her anti-war art in light of this particular conflict, one which commenced after the artist passed. They must be careful not to fall into anachronism, for the reality is, as always, more complex.
Her partner was a member of the Soviet Army, and she was well-respected by Russian journalists. Prymachenko was exhibited in and invited to Moscow to practice, an opportunity rejected only as she was mid-painting cycle. Her biographers suggest she was never a ‘political person’, for never depicting politicians; but this is to ignore how politics permeates her life and practice. (Some have read a hat on one of her beasts as a nod to Joseph Stalin’s cap, but it’s pure speculation.)
Her politics were global, but grounded in the local, her village just 30 kilometres from Chernobyl. Titles like ‘May that nuclear war be cursed!’ (1978) and ‘Mr Reagan, think about how heavy and heavy and unreasonable this Atom is’ (1986)’ speak to an altogether different and particular time – her bears aren’t necessarily Russian - and must not be conflated with contemporary political criticism, or efforts to decolonise museums. Indeed, there is nothing military about her depictions of the national army, a group bound by the strength of their folk traditions and culture, not their weapons.
Prymachenko was twice exhibited in the Venice Biennale 2022, and with good reason; her work certainly has renewed importance in light of the conflict. We should hope that this exhibition represents a rising interest and respect for Central and Eastern Europe, and that similar exhibitions of folk art from the Balkans, Baltics, or states not thrust in the global spotlight by war may soon follow. But so long as art markets launder Russian money, and Saatchi sells books of Soviet posters in the bookshop, it seems their pro-Ukraine politics will remain a visionary performance too.
