ROMANYSHYN MYKHAILO

People's Artist of Ukraine (1991). Member of the Union of Artists of Ukraine (1965). Honoured Artist of the USSR (1976).

He was born in Velykyi Bereznyi village, Transcarpathia. The artist grew up without parents because his mother died when Mykhailo was 7 months, and his father left to work in Germany. His grandparents on the mother’s side raised him and his sister Iryna.

He was fond of drawing since the early years – love for painting was instilled by his schoolteacher Kateryna Shelepets, who advised the young man to enter an art school. From 1948 to 1953, he studied at the Uzhhorod Art and Industrial School at the coryphaei of the Transcarpathian School of Painting Adalbert Erdeli, Yosyp Bokshai, Fedir Manailo, Ernest Kontratovych, and Andrii Kotska. Then he graduated from Kyiv Art Institute (1953 – 1960), where his teachers were Heorhii Melikhov, Leonid Chychkan and Karpo Trokhymenko. Thus, in the artist's works, it was combined two bright and distinctive schools of painting – Transcarpathian and Kyiv.

Having finished studying, he remained to live and work in the capital. "Between the Carpathians and Kyiv there is much in common as to the structural and plastic construction of the relief," he emphasized. “In addition, Kyiv is like a monolith in the historical sense. And his fate is harsh, stormy and beautiful, the same is with the Carpathians. I love Kyiv so much, I did not dare to paint it for many years, I just looked at it and listened to myself, making sketches, small etudes. Finally, I saw the city in my own way, which gave me courage and energy."

Mykhailo Romanyshyn made a tremendous contribution to the development of Ukrainian culture – he worked at the Ministry of Culture, he was repeatedly elected as a responsible secretary of the Union of Artists of Ukraine, he was a member of the Board of the Union of Artists of the USSR, a member of the UNESCO Commission. He also published articles and reviews, organized numerous exhibitions of the Ukrainian fine arts, folk and decorative art in Ukraine, Europe, and the world. For the last 11 years of his life, the artist headed the largest art treasure of Ukraine – National Art Museum.

The circle of creative interests of the master was quite wide: thematic painting, portrait, still life. A special place in his creativity occupied landscapes. The native Carpathians and no less native Kyiv – two milestones that both create a whole gallery of images of primordial and man-made nature.

As art historians point out, Mykhailo Romanyshyn had a developed sense of colour and tone. There are no sharp contrasts of light and shadow in his paintings, the sonority of colours would be muffled by the overall colour of the work, built on large spatial colour combinations. The masses of colour with a lot of the subtlest shades and tone transitions are compositionally balanced.

The artist organically combined the decorative character of folk art and the materiality of the plastic form, strength, completeness of the composition, and impressionistic perception of nature through plein air. The surprisingly natural fusion of such seemingly different components determined the artist's unique creative face, high painting culture of his canvases.

The works of Mykhailo Romanyshyn could be seen at exhibitions since 1960. He presented Ukrainian art in the international arena, in particular in Leipzig, Cracow, Kyoto, Florence, and Paris.

The works of the artist are kept in museums, galleries, private collections in Ukraine and far beyond its borders.

Text: Kseniia Shokina
© Art & Culture Foundation Brovdi Art