Painters [*/ ) The Ukrainian Avant-garde painter Anatol Petrytsky, 1920s
Anatol Petrytsky, Sketch of a male costume for the opera by G. Rossini, 1927 / Anatol Petrytsky, Prince Igor. A Sketch for the Opera ‘Prince Igor’ by A. Borodin, 1929
Anatol Petrytsky, Sketch of Costumes for G. Puccini’s Opera ‘Turandot’, 1928 / Anatol Petrytsky, Dance costume sketches for Eccentric Dances, 1922
Anatol Petrytsky, Sketch of Costumes for the Play ‘Footballer’ Anatol Petrytsky, Costume sketch, 1920s
Anatol Petrytsky, Costume sketch, 1920s Anatol Petrytsky, Footballers, 1920s
Anatol Petrytsky, An Eccentric Dance, 1922 Anatol Petrytsky, Gnat Yura, 1926
^Anatol Petrytsky, Don Juan (costume) for Lesia Ukrainka’s play The Stone Host, 1921
Anatol Petrytsky, Donna Anna (costume) for Lesia Ukrainka’s play The Stone Host, 1921 ^
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Petrytskyi’s talent was highly appreciated abroad. The album “Theatrical costumes by
Petrytskyi”, published in 1929 in Kharkiv, were purchased by P. Picasso for his library.
Anatol Petrytsky, 1930s
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Anatol Petrytsky (1895-1964) was a Ukrainian painter, stage and book designer.
The fate of Anatol Petrytsky (1895–1965), a first-rank artist of the Ukrainian avant-garde of
the first third of the twentieth century, reflects the many twists and turns in twentieth-century
Ukrainian art as part of the history of Ukraine, its struggle for independence, its defeats and
victories. Like his older predecessors who were born in Ukraine at the end of the nineteenth
century (Kazimir Malevich, Aleksandra Exter), he sought to develop his talent in foreign
capitals and art centers. He was drawn to the Higher Art and Technical Studios (VKhUTEMAS)
in Moscow, where he studied in 1922–24, and the Bauhaus, whose entrance examination he
passed in 1933 but was prevented from attending by the fateful changes in the sociopolitical
life of Germany.
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However, Petrytsky was already formed as an artist by the 1910s on the solid basis of the then
already transformed Kyiv school of painting: the Kyiv Art School, the studios of Aleksandra
Exter and Oleksandr Murashko, Mykhailo Boichuk’s monumental painting workshop at the
Ukrainian State Academy of Arts, and the strong influence of Vasyl Krychevsky and Danylo
Shcherbakivsky. He took part in the process of reviving Ukrainian art from his early years.
Together with Mykhailo Semenko he blazed the trail for Futurism. Together with Les Kurbas
he reformed Ukrainian stage design: he began working on musical productions (Mykola Lysenko’s
Taras Bulba, Aleksandr Borodin’s Prince Igor), exploring new avant-garde forms fused into a single
undivided whole with the artistic traditions of the professional and folk art of Ukraine. In the 1920s,
Petrytsky gained fame at home and abroad primarily as a brilliant avant-garde scenographer.
His high status as an artist was confirmed by his highly successful participation in the 17th
Venice Biennale (1930), where his large canvas Disabled (1924) became the “highlight
of the exhibition,” according to art historian Mykhailo Drahan.
