Monumental art on the Historical Crossroads. From Rénovation Byzantine to Michail Boitchuk’s “Form-making Dialectic”

Abstract

This paper is devoted to an analysis of Michail Boitchuk's painting, especially his monumental painting. The development of the painter's outlook has been studied on the basis of numerous comments in theoretical journals. They have been then illustrated by formal examples of this eminent Ukrainian painter. Most of his polychromies have been destroyed, but on the basis of photos we can reconstruct Boitchuk's method of work. We have shown in detail the painter's art from his “Paris” period to the Soviet times and his pedagogical activity in the newly-established Ukrainian Academy of Art. It has been shown how the Soviet authorities of the Ukraine used the painter's artistic skills for the propaganda of the communist idea, and then doomed his artistic output to oblivion, and Boitchuk himself was sentenced to death.