Ukrainian artist Maria Primachenko. Maria primachenko. little-known facts from the life of Primachenko

"I make sunny flowers, because I love people, I create joy, for the happiness of people, so that all peoples love one one, so that they live like flowers throughout the earth ..." - this is how a well-known Ukrainian amateur artist says about herself Maria Aksentyevna Primachenko, whose original work is filled with the breath of the native land, warmed by the kindness and wisdom of folk poetry.

Facts from the biography of Maria Primachenko

Was born Maria Primachenko January 12, 1909 in the village of Bolotnya, located in Polesie (today the Kiev region).

She absorbed love for folk art not only with folk tales, legends, songs, but also watching the work of her mother, who was engaged in embroidery. Like any little girl Masha tried to repeat after her mother, only she did not embroider these patterns, but redrawn them on cardboard or paper. Over time, children's hobby became the main occupation.

The young artist painted her first paintings on the sand. Then I found colored clay and painted the hut. The whole village went to see this miracle, and then fellow villagers asked to decorate their houses as well.

1935 was a turning point in creativity Mary Primachenko- she meets the artist Tatyana Flora, who really likes the works of the talented village folk craftswoman.

At the invitation of Flora, Maria Aksentyevna moves to Kiev and starts working in an experimental workshop. From that moment on, the artist's works began to be exhibited not only in Ukraine, but also abroad.

The second half of the 50s is the beginning of a mature and fruitful period in the artist's work. A large number of cycles emerge from her workshop. It was during this period that works appeared, for which the artist was awarded the "Badge of Honor" and became a laureate of the State Prize of the TsSSR T. G. Shevchenko.

Artistic style of Maria Primachenko

“I love to paint how people work in the field, how young people walk, like a poppy is blooming. I love all living things, I love the forest, flowers, various birds and forest animals. I dress them in folk clothes, and they are so funny with me, they already dance ... ".

Throughout his creative career Maria Primachenko did not depart from the folk theme. This nationality is expressed in a combination of colors, the use of national ornaments. In addition, the artist depicts national dishes, ritual pastries, wall paintings in her paintings.

As a rule, her drawings are illustrations for folk songs or folk tales. But in these works Maria Primachenko reflects his reflections on the modern world. Hence the perception of pictures. At first glance, the artist's works seem very simple, but if you look closely, you can find deep content behind the unpretentious plot.

Themes of the artist's paintings

If the early works were based on fairy tales, then the works that Maria Aksentyevna created in her mature period of creativity, it is difficult to call it just fabulous. For these paintings, the most accurate definition would be “symbolic - allegorical compositions”.

During these years, the artist turns to the theme of man, to the theme of modern society and the modern world. Unlike the fairy tale world, the modern world seems Primachenko gray, as a result - more faded colors of paints in the paintings of this period.

In the 70s, the artist began to collaborate with print media. Due to this Maria Aksentyevna appears before the whole society in a new capacity - an illustrator of children's books. From these illustrations, we can conclude that the artist knows how to look at the world with children's eyes: her pictures are spontaneous, joyful and they finish the literary text.

Personality traits.

Great attention in their works Primachenko gave composition and color.

Color is one of the most important means of expression for an artist. Looking at the paintings, one gets the feeling that the color is "alive", that it changes its shade depending on certain factors. This feeling arises from the color combinations that the artist uses.

An innovative technique uses Maria Primachenko and in the composition. The essence of this technique is that the artist conventionally divides the entire drawing into plans, on each of which a certain object is drawn. These plans then seem to be superimposed on each other. This interaction of planes evokes a sense of volume.

Although Maria Primachenko refers to those who create folk art, she is, first of all, an independent artist. This distinction allows us to make the fact that the artist uses materials that are not associated with folk art: watercolor, gouache, Whatman paper, etc.

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Maria Primachenko

Ukrainian folk artist, representative of "folk primitive" ("naive art"). She was born in 1909 in the village of Bolotnya, Kiev region, where she lived all her life. At the same time, her works were exhibited all over the world: in Montreal, Paris, Prague, Warsaw, Sofia. She died in 1997 in her native village, where she was buried. By a decision of UNESCO, 2009, when the artist could have turned 100 years old, was declared the year of Maria Primachenko.

Popular fiction in Ukrainian art is firmly connected with the name of Maria Primachenko, a peasant woman without art education, who lived her entire life in the village of Bolotnya, Kiev region, which did not prevent her from capturing the imagination of Picasso himself. Her paintings, full of bright colors and recognizable images, have become one of the iconic phenomena of modern Ukrainian culture, recognized far beyond the borders of the country.

Maria Avksentievna Primachenko was born in 1909. She survived two world wars and the collapse of two empires - first Russian, then Soviet. But the biggest tragedy was the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, because the artist's native village borders on a 30-kilometer exclusion zone.

Since childhood, Maria was surrounded by beautiful things - her father was a virtuoso carpenter and made luxurious wooden sculptures. Mom was a famous embroiderer and taught her daughter how to craft. “It all started like that,” the artist recalled. - Once near the house, above the river, in a flowering meadow, I grazed geese. I drew all kinds of flowers that I saw on the sand. And then she noticed the bluish clay. I put it in the hem of my skirt and painted our hut. " The neighbors looked at the marvelous drawings and praised them, then they began to ask to paint the neighboring houses.

Since childhood, Maria was surrounded by beautiful things - her father was a virtuoso carpenter and made luxurious wooden sculptures. Mom was a famous embroiderer and taught her daughter how to craft.

The discovery of the talent of Maria Primachenko took place in the most difficult years for Ukrainian culture, when the cultural revival of the 1920s was shot in the basements of the NKVD. In 1936, Tatiana Flora, a weaver and embroiderer from Kiev, saw Primachenko's work. On her recommendation, Primachenko was invited to the experimental workshops at the Museum of Ukrainian Art. A variety of new practices come into her work - from embroidery to ceramics. In the same year, she received her first degree diploma at an exhibition of folk art. Since then, her work has been shown abroad - in Warsaw, Prague, Montreal and Paris.

Maria Primachenko called her main inspiration the nature of her native Polesye, and eminent art historians and critics see in her paintings the images of pre-Christian deities and the outlook of primitive man of the Paleolithic times. Plants with flowers, a tree of life, unseen birds, illustrations for folk tales, everyday scenes and famous fantastic animals depicted in bright colors without perspective and volume - primitively simple, but mesmerizing even the most sophisticated eye - the secret of a folk artist defies the laws of traditional art.

Prymachenko's characters, and indeed all elements in her paintings, are divided into good and evil. The binary world, as it appears in the mythological consciousness, is expressed here in elementary visual elements. Even the fantastic bestiary represents the "armies" of good and evil. Remarkably, good animals always look like real animals, even if Primachenko has never seen these animals with her own eyes (for example, monkeys). While evil creatures are a figment of her imagination and they are characterized by the features of "invisible dark forces" - monsters, dragons. Primachenko's animals are anthropomorphic and, upon close examination, look like people. So, many of them have long curled eyelashes or arched eyebrows. Of course, good always triumphs and evil is overthrown. A bright sun blooms over the world - a paradise flower with many petals, which, like rays, warm the world.

All the worlds meet in these vivid pictures: the fantastic and the tragically real. Folk tales and tributes to those who died in the war or the Chernobyl tragedy appear in the forms of a bright and colorful dimension of Maria Primachenko. The fantastic world, everyday scenes, cosmic fantasies, social satire coexist here in the harmony of the images addressed to us.

Primachenko's characters are divided into good and evil. Good beasts are always like real animals, while evil beasts are a figment of her imagination.

She had no professional secrets: Whatman paper and gouache, sometimes watercolor and preparatory pencil drawing. At the same time, Maria Primachenko combined painting and graphics in her work. This is both pictorial graphics and graphic painting at the same time. Her technique is far from professionalism, and the aesthetic influence of her work often depends on subtle nuances that defy scientific analysis or verbal expression. For example, often in her works, color becomes a full-fledged creator of the composition, he also "voices" the mood or creates the rhythm of the picture. She never leaves the background white, with the exception of a few works. It is noteworthy that Prymachenko not only follows the canon of folk art - she is an innovator in figurative thinking and offers unique stylistic techniques. Even the embroideries, in which she dresses the fairy-tale characters, were invented by herself, and not borrowed from folk crafts.

Primachenko applied her creative approach in the names of her paintings. Even more: these names showed her poetic talent. Sometimes it is a moral maxim, sometimes a lyrical sketch, a version of a folk fable or a joke: "Little girls dance and plow", "Hell's dog is not afraid of a reptile", "A raven of two babi mav - both embraced", "Vesnianki-cornea - funny birds". It is often impossible to translate these maxims, but for the sake of them it is worth learning Ukrainian: “The fox is cunning to the doctor, as if:“ Oh, you will get better with corn ”- but you’re carrying a chicken that honey; in niy power є ". “Forty-like: 'Chi-chi-chi! Oh, why should we sleep? "-" On the stove. " - "Well, can we drink it?" “The hazel grouses are chirping:“ But winter is coming soon, but there’s no hut in us. ” The bunny called himself: “And I'm not afraid of winter, I’m sniffing at the snig.” With a new rock, with a new spring, with new happiness, people on Earth. "

She is an innovator in imaginative thinking. Even the embroideries, in which she dresses the fairy-tale characters, were invented by herself, and not borrowed from folk crafts.

The fabulousness of Primachenko's creativity "asks" for children's books. In the 1980s, together with the poet Mikhail Stelmakh, she creates illustrations for several children's books: "Zhuravel", "Zatz spati wished", "Chornoguz take a shower". In our time, they have not been reprinted, and you will not be able to please your children with fancy drawings of a fantasy grandmother.

2009, when the artist would have turned 100 years old, UNESCO declared her the year. As a rare exception, Ukraine celebrated its anniversary with dignity, and the world saw exhibitions, catalogs, celebrations, as well as obligatory stamps and coins. Kiev, Brovary and Kramatorsk now have streets and boulevards named after her. A planet is named in honor of Maria Primachenko, several documentaries have been filmed about the artist, hundreds of articles and even a story for children have been written. And in 2007, her name sounded in court: the Finnish company "Marimekko" released a series of things for the house with a pattern too similar to the 1961 painting "Schur at the Road". The company acknowledged the plagiarism, but by that time the drawing had already been applied to the airline's planes and flew around the world. The scandal itself caused a new wave of interest in Primachenko's work all over the world.

Creativity of the People's Artist of Ukraine, laureate of the State Prize of Ukraine named after TG Shevchenko Maria Primachenko is an original phenomenon, unique, like the art of each of the great masters.
She was keenly aware of her Ukrainianness, but when someone tried to clumsily exaggerate it, she “took refuge”. She was a humanist and emphasized that she did not care what kind of faith a person (namely, faith, and not nationality), which is ten times more correct.
For me, she still represents the whole world: her own closed and common one - the one in which we all live. It is striking in her that she was an illiterate rural woman and at the same time - a fantastic, deepest philosopher of our time, a morally educated person. She expressed with a brush what she could not express ...
“It all started like this,” the artist recalled. “Once near the house, over the river in a flowery meadow, I grazed geese. On the sand I drew all kinds of flowers I saw, and then I noticed bluish silt. I gathered it into the hem and painted our house ...” ... Everyone came to see this curiosity, made by the hands of a girl. Praised. Neighbors asked to decorate their houses too. Were surprised, advised to study
Folk artistMaria Primachenko with her creativity opened the original page of the original art of world culture. Her exhibitions have been shown with great success in France, Canada, Poland, Russia, Germany and many other countries of the world. In 1937, at the world exhibition in Paris, Maria Prymachenko received a gold medal, surprising the artistic world with her paintings ... In all catalogs and articles, this event is remembered by the fact that Picasso himself was delighted with gasps and groans before her works. Often the director S. Paradzhanov came to her, fascinated by her paintings and by Maria herself, and on occasion he handed her gifts. Somehow, in an era of total scarcity, he handed her a huge box of oranges, which Maria had never seen before. She just admired them and said that they were suns, as if they had come out of her paintings.
Once, back in Soviet times, chiefs from the Union of Artists of Ukraine came to Primachenko on the Volga - in nylon T-shirts, plastic mesh hats, leather sandals and with briefcases in their hands - they also brought three carnations for the exhibition. They come in, knock, and Maria at this time stands on the table, picking up her skirt and leaning with one hand on a crutch, and with the other whitewashing the ceiling of the hut with blue lime ... "Anu back!" - I had to unkindly ask the guests to get out urgently. “It’s a shame, Lord, it’s uncomfortable what kind we found, I’m now, in a moment ...” And it happened instantly: I was not afraid - I jumped to the floor with this very crutch and with a wet brush - it became so awkward for my sloppy appearance and especially for a crippled leg peeking out from under a flowered calico.
Until she changed her clothes and put herself in order, she kept the guests on the veranda and did not let them into the room. Then she set the table, treated the people of Kiev with cherry liqueur, hidden for such a case canned "Gobies in a tomato" and scrambled eggs from the Bolotnyanskaya "kochubarka" (the artist called the heroines of her paintings - chickens - "kochubarkas".). I received this very letter, but when I took three red carnations in my hands, I didn’t know what to say because of the inconvenience and misunderstanding by the leaders of the “moment” - it was the zenith, the top of the summer: “Dyakuyu, but why are you, really? .. Probably, they bought it from the greenhouse? - in our village there is summer, a blessed lime tree. The mustache blooms, sings, promotes - it asks for a picture, everything is so violent, but magnificent, and beautiful ... Lord, glory to Thee ... "

"I make sunny flowers because I love people, I create for joy, for happiness for people, so that all peoples love each other, so that they live like flowers throughout the earth ..." - This is what the original artist said.
Having studied at school for only four classes, she, apparently, would have disappeared into obscurity, but in the 30s the party threw a cry - to look for folk nuggets. Primachenko was found and taught for a year in Kiev. They say that her teacher did not let the girl into the zoo. - I was afraid that the real lions and monkeys seen there would harm the animals that were born in the artist's fantasies.
When the war began, Maria Prymachenko returned to her native village, sharing the difficulties of the occupation and the joy of victory with her fellow villagers. The war took her husband from her, who did not have time to see the son of Fyodor, but did not break the creative spirit of the craftswoman.
Then there were many years of oblivion. In the 60s, they remembered about her again - followed by signs of recognition - the Order of the Badge of Honor, the title of Shevchenko Prize laureate.
And the world recognition is evidenced by the fact that it is her work that flaunts on the cover of the "World Encyclopedia of Naive Art", where she herself is presented as a star of the first magnitude.
Maria Primachenko constantly learns from her native Polissya nature. Pagan images of fantastic monsters and birds are also embodied in her paintings. Behind these works is a large, varied school of folk art, the centuries-old culture of the people. It is like a bundle of emotional impressions from fairy tales, legends, and life itself. The process of her creativity is a phenomenon of an amazing fusion of concrete thinking, intuition, fantasy and, finally, the subconscious, when unprecedented, sometimes bizarre images, bizarre decorative compositions that generously radiate the energy of kindness and naive wonder at the world are released. The artist's works are always perceived as alive, part of nature, the Ukrainian land. The artist's flower arrangements are reminiscent of wall painting, they are extremely architectonic. "Now, if you could collect folk craftsmen from all over Ukraine, what wonders they would have done - would bloom not only with gardens. Kiev. Buildings would laugh before people ..." - the artist dreamed.

Her "series of animals" in recent years is a unique phenomenon and has no analogues either in domestic or world art. Fantastic beasts are the creation of the artist's ingenious imagination. Such animals do not exist in nature."Wild chaplun" - from the word "chapat" - such a name was invented by Primachenko to one of the animals, focusing on his paws, capable of wading through alder thickets, and in general - through the mysterious jungle of life. Mysterious animals of the artist always have their earthly principle, and the realities of the present day become the impetus for their birth with time. Primachenka's fantastic animals are both a warning and a call for friendship, for peace.

Maria is not only a wonderful artist, but also a talented poet. The signed names of the paintings testify to her phenomenal talent for drawing music, drawing a song. Primachenko the poet realizes himself in his own signatures to the paintings. These signatures are easy to remember. as if imprinted in memory:
"Three busliks in peas still live with us ..." Buslya - stork (dialect)
"I wanted honey for the bears"
There are also short jokes: "The little girls are dancing and the bread is plowing", "The dog of Hell is not afraid of the reptile", "The raven had two women - he hugged both", "Freckles-corneal - funny birds" and others.

I love to paint, how people work in the field, how young people go. as if poppies bloom - the artist confessed. - I love all living things. I love to draw flowers. different birds and forest animals. I dress them in folk clothes, and they are so funny with me ...
1986 Primachenko created an impressive Chernobyl series. The native village of Maria Primachenko is located in the 30-kilometer zone of Chernobyl, and the artist's heart with thousands of strings has connected with the fate of people close and dear to her, one way or another affected by the atomic disaster ... A series of works dedicated to this tragedy has spread all over the world.

In the last years of her life, an old illness fettered Maria Oksentievna, she did not get out of bed. But she continued to communicate with the world - to draw ... At the age of 89 on the night of August 18, 1997) the tireless worker of Ukrainian culture left us.
"Maria Primachenko is as important for Ukraine as Pirosmani is for Georgia, as Rousseau is for France. And at the same time, neither Kiev nor her homeland has a museum of the artist."
The paintings of Maria Primachenko are kept at the house of her son Fyodor and have been stolen more than once. More recently, almost 100 of the artist's works were also stolen. but luckily all were found and returned.
It is sad, but we do not know how to respect and protect our national wealth. ((
Pictures of Maria Primachenko here.

Maria Primachenko (sometimes Prymachenko; 1908-1997) - Ukrainian folk artist. The representative of the "folk primitive" ("naive art").

Biography of Maria Primachenko

MA Primachenko was born on December 30 (January 12), 1909 in the village of Bolotnya (now Ivankovsky district of Kiev region of Ukraine), where she spent her whole life.

Father, Avksentiy Grigorievich, was a virtuoso carpenter, making yard fences.

Mother, Praskovya Vasilievna, was a recognized master of embroidery (Maria Avksentievna herself dressed in her own embroidered shirts).

The childhood of Maria Avksentievna was overshadowed by a terrible disease - poliomyelitis. This made her not childishly serious and observant, sharpened her hearing and vision.

Maria Avksentievna endured all life's hardships with dignity and courage, experienced the happiness of love (her husband died at the front) and the happiness of motherhood. She had a son, Fedor, also a former People's Artist of Ukraine. He was her student (died 2008).

Primachenko's creativity

“It all started like this,” the artist recalled. - Once near the hut, by the river, in a meadow decorated with flowers, I grazed geese. I drew all kinds of flowers that I saw on the sand. And then she noticed the bluish clay. I put it in the hem and painted our hut ... ”.

Everyone came to see this curiosity, made by the hands of a girl. Praised. Neighbors asked to decorate their houses too.

Tatiana Flora, a resident of Kiev, discovered Primachenko's talent (in the 1960s-1970s, journalist G.A.Mestechkin organized a wide popularization of Primachenko's work).

In 1936, Maria Avksentievna was invited to the experimental workshops at the Kiev Museum of Ukrainian Art.

Her work became more diverse - Maria painted, embroidered, and became interested in ceramics. Her ceramic jugs and dishes from this period are kept in the State Museum of Ukrainian Folk and Decorative-Applied Arts. Akim Gerasimenko, a recognized master of Ukrainian ceramics, willingly gave Primachenko his products of various shapes, and she painted them with images of red chanterelles, terrible animals walking on strawberry stalks of blue monkeys or green crocodiles covered with flowers.

There is information that Maria Primachenko showed her talent in the field of ceramic sculpture. Only one work in this genre has survived - "Crocodile".

For participation in the exhibition of folk art in 1936, Primachenko was awarded a first degree diploma. In the future, her works were exhibited with constant success at exhibitions in Paris, Warsaw, Sofia, Montreal, Prague.

In 1986 she created her Chernobyl series of paintings.

Naive artist Maria Prymachenko was not naive when it came to the tragedy of the world. She did not know where her husband's grave was, and this motive is frequent in her works.

In 1971 she painted the picture "Soldiers' Graves". It can also be interpreted as a premonition of Chernobyl - it was in that year that the construction of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant with its four reactors began. So in that picture there is a forest, and in it four graves shine, similar to four suns or four huge eggs in a section - a fiery yolk, and in it a soldier's helmet.

Priimachenko's paintings are supposedly traditionally "Ukrainian", but this is a country of dreams, not reality.

The artist has been compared to Bosch and Hitchcock, artists of apocalyptic visions.

Director Serhiy Proskurnya recalls: once the cribs came to her from Kiev, sang about “our glorious Ukraine,” and Maria Oksentievna suddenly said sadly.

Maria Ovksentievna Prymachenko, a master of Ukrainian "naive art", carried through her whole life a thirst to create, an irresistible need to share her discoveries with people. She is one of those artists who created a unique world of their own images, a world of beauty, skillfully expressed the feelings that live among the people, in their folklore and thoughts.

Childhood of the artist

Bolotnya, the native village of Maria Prymachenko, is located 80 km from Kiev. It was here that the artist was born in January 1909. Her father was a carpenter and also a woodcarver. And my mother was a famous needlewoman of embroidery: the whole family wore embroidered shirts of her production. Maria's grandmother was also engaged in creative activities - she painted Easter eggs.

The first in Mary appeared in early childhood: she was fond of drawing flowers in the sand. And then she began to paint the huts with blue patterns. Firebirds adorned the walls of the houses and fantastic flowers bloomed. The villagers liked these drawings, which looked so beautiful on the walls and stoves.

After a while, the future artist began to receive the first orders: neighbors asked to decorate their houses with the same amazing patterns. Even residents of neighboring villages gathered to admire her work.

The artist's worldview and positive outlook on life

The biography of Maria Primachenko was not without difficult moments in her life. As a child, the artist suffered from a terrible disease - poliomyelitis, which left its negative reflection on the fate of the craftswoman. Maria walked on crutches all her life. This fact also influenced the painterly manner of the author. Unbearable physical pain, combined with unbridled creative imagination and desire for life, poured into bizarre images. Now it is called art therapy. The confrontation between joy and pain, good and evil, darkness and light is observed in every painting by Maria Prymachenko.

The artist had a rather strict character, but she was friendly to people. Sometimes Priymachenko gave pictures to guests of her house. There were two worlds for Mary. Everyone lived in the first, and the second, internal, belonged only to her.

Her world was filled with various fantastic creatures, wonderful birds sang here, fish learned to fly, rainbow cows with human eyes grazed in the meadow, and a kind brave lion was a protector from enemies.

The beginning of the work of Maria Primachenko

The artist became famous since 1936, when for the first time in Kiev at the All-Ukrainian Exhibition of Folk Art her works "Animals from the Swamp" were exhibited. Maria was awarded the 1st degree diploma. Here she began to take a great interest in ceramics and continued to engage in embroidery and painting. In particular, she wrote a number of wonderful paintings: "A goby for a walk", "Blue lion", "Pied beast", "Beast in red boots" 1936-1937, "Donkey", "Ram", "Red berries", " Monkeys are dancing ”,“ Two parrots ”and others (1937-1940).

The images of these works are striking in their fabulousness, magic and fantasticness. They are based on folklore legends, life stories and folk tales. Reality and fantasy are intertwined in her works. Animals, flowers and trees are endowed with the ability to talk, they fight for good and resist evil - everything is like in a fairy tale.

Birds also have fabulous properties: they have bizarre shapes, intricate outlines that resemble a flower, and the wings are decorated with embroidery. All of Mary's animals and birds are sunny, colorful, pleasing to the eye with their positivity ("The elephant wanted to be a sailor", "A young bear walks through the forest and does no harm to people").

Creativity in the war and post-war periods

During the war, Maria Primachenko interrupts her creative pursuits and returns to her native village. Here she lived through the terrible years of her life. The war took her husband from her, who could not see his son. In the post-war period, the artist permanently lives in Bolotnya, turning her parents' house into a workshop. The year 1950 dates back to her embroidered panels "Peaks in grapes" on a blue background, on a brown background "Two apple trees", as well as paintings: "Two hoopoes in flowers", "Ukrainian flowers". In 1953-1959, Maria Prymachenko's drawings "Puss in Boots", "Peacock", "Crane and Fox", "Shepherds" became famous. These works testify to the improvement of the figurative manner of Primachenko.

Creativity 70-80s

A special flowering of her work falls on the early 70s. If earlier the artist depicted real animals, then in the 70-80s. in her works, fantastic animals appear that do not exist in reality. This is a four-headed ancient swamp animal, and a swamp crayfish, and Horun, and a prus, and a wild gorbotrus, and a wild volezakh. She motivated the name of the wild chaplun with the word "chapati". Emphasis is placed on the paws of the beast, which can wade through the alder thickets. There are animals purple, black, blue; sad, funny, smiling, surprised. There are animals with human faces. Allegorical beasts are evil. Thus, a purple beast in a "bourgeois" cap, painted with stylized bombs, grinned angrily, showing sharp teeth and a long, predatory tongue ("Damn the war! Bombs grow instead of flowers", 1984).

Style features

The artist's works are a combination of all possible artistic styles of the twentieth century: impressionism, neo-romanticism, expressionism. One of Maria Prymachenko's favorite themes, to which she often turned, is the cosmic one. She loved the starry sky and inhabited it with her winged creatures - the hunchback, mermaids, birds. Even on the moon, she planted vegetable gardens, cherishing her magical dreams. Her wonderful world was magical and inimitable, unique and radiant, sincere and kind, like herself.

The work of a folk artist teaches people to notice beauty in everything. She tried to show each person individually how important it is to remain children even in old age, to maintain the ability to be surprised and see a lively interest in everything that is happening around. The works of Maria Prymachenko really bring us back to childhood. There is nothing superfluous on them, we see only the uncontrollable fantasy of a woman with an amazing soul, with folk energy displayed in the paintings.

When Maria was asked why she draws flowers, she answered: “Why draw as they are, they are already beautiful, but I draw mine for the joy of people. I really want more people to see the drawings and so that everyone will like them. "

The genius of the artist

The world of art has discovered the amazing work of Maria Primachenko at least twice. The artist first gained popularity in 1935 as part of a campaign to find talent among the people. Then the works of the rural craftswoman attracted the attention of the capital's needlewoman Tatyana Flora, who collected masterpieces of folk art for the exhibition. As a result, the artist successfully works in the Kiev experimental workshops. The artist's talent contributed to the fact that she mastered the skills of modeling and painting clay products.

The artist's works quickly began to gain popularity abroad as well. Visitors of Moscow, Prague, Montreal, Warsaw and other European exhibitions could get acquainted with amazing animals. Art connoisseurs were shown drawings by Maria Prymachenko "Two Parrots", "Black Beast", "Dog in a Cap", "Beast in Red Boots", "Bull for a Walk", "Red Berries".

The world exhibition of Maria Pryimachenko, which took place in Paris, brought great fame to the Ukrainian artist, for which she was awarded a gold medal. It was in the French capital that venerable colleagues such as Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall first got acquainted with the artist's works. They appreciated her work and even began to use similar motives for their works.

The second time the talent of a folk artist was discovered in the 60s. This was facilitated by the famous art critic and playwright Grigory Mestechkin, as well as the journalist Yuri Rost. An article about the work of Maria Primachenko, which was published by a journalist in the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, made her popular again.

Death of the artist

At the 89th year of her life, the outstanding artist died. But, fortunately, the family of Priymachenko artists continued. Her best disciple was her son, Fedor, now honored. Her grandchildren, Peter and John, also sent her way. Today they are young, talented artists, each with a bright personality. Growing up alongside masters like their grandmother and father, they adopted the best.

Perpetuation of the memory of Maria Primachenko

The small planet 14624 Primachenko was named after the folk craftswoman. This name was proposed by Klim Churyumov. In honor of the famous artist, a commemorative coin was issued in 2008. A year later, in Kiev, Likhachev Boulevard was renamed into Maria Priymachenko Boulevard. In the cities of Brovary, Sumy and Kramatorsk there are streets named after Maria Primachenko.