Days after invading Ukraine, Russian forces fired rockets at a museum housing colorful paintings by the late Ukrainian folk artist Maria Prymachenko, admired by Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall. The building burned down, but her joyful work survived.
Residents of the northern town of Ivankiv managed to rescue the pictures, turning the imaginative painter into a symbol of endurance and hope. Prymachenko’s light through darkness approach, despite a lifetime of hardships, opened yesterday in the Polish capital, now home to thousands of refugees from fUkraine.
The exhibition features dozens of gouache paintings of rural life and fantastical creatures in a childlike style and a palette resplendent with flamboyant tones of highlighter pink, sunflower yellow and blood orange.
Photo: AFP
“Beyond being a famous painter, Maria Prymachenko is also a great symbol of Russia’s failure to erase Ukrainian identity and culture,” said Vitalii Bilyi, counselor at the Ukrainian embassy in Warsaw.
“And thanks to this exhibition we can spread the word,” he said at a press preview of the show entitled “A Tiger Came into the Garden,” which runs until June at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.
Prymachenko was born in the village of Bolotnya in 1909 and over nearly nine decades survived polio, the Ukrainian famine, both world wars — losing her husband to the second — and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
“She showed strength of spirit and painted all her life. The paintings, while colorful, show different aspects of life and the Ukrainian tragedy,” said Myroslava Keryk, head of the Ukrainian House Foundation which promotes the country’s culture in Poland.
“And they provide hope of victory, that we will persevere and the war will end,” she said.
Prymachenko produced her commentary on everyday life by pairing images of animals or nature with little poems, often with grammatical mistakes because of her lack of education, Keryk said.
An example from the exhibition is a meditation on hunger featuring a cheery yellow and pink depiction of a billy goat and the title “Dear little goat, have you eaten, have you drunk?”
Another shows bright pink ornamental tulips against a somber background with a caption that begins: “A bouquet to the Unknown Soldier. Honor and glory to you, dear warriors!”
The war widow painted a whole series dedicated to fighting men, which several decades later “has an incredible topical anti-war message,” co-curator Szymon Maliborski said.
“These are works that allow Prymachenko to, on the one hand, avoid having to directly depict war, but on the other hand show a grappling with loss, the death of a loved one,” he said.
A sunny painting of exotic blue birds is offset by the poem, “Four parrots sit in a cherry tree humming. The boys go to the army and the girls see them off — wishing them luck.”
This contrast between optimism and trauma was typical for the painter who had wished for “people to live like flowers bloom,” Maliborski said.
She often “mixed the solemn with the comical, adding a dash of humor or acceptance to her criticism,” he said. “There’s a kind of coming to terms with the world and wanting to change it simultaneously. The awareness that human nature is what it is yet fighting for it to be better,” he said.
Seven people sustained mostly minor injuries in an airplane fire in South Korea, authorities said yesterday, with local media suggesting the blaze might have been caused by a portable battery stored in the overhead bin. The Air Busan plane, an Airbus A321, was set to fly to Hong Kong from Gimhae International Airport in southeastern Busan, but caught fire in the rear section on Tuesday night, the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. A total of 169 passengers and seven flight attendants and staff were evacuated down inflatable slides, it said. Authorities initially reported three injuries, but revised the number
‘BALD-FACED LIE’: The woman is accused of administering non-prescribed drugs to the one-year-old and filmed the toddler’s distress to solicit donations online A social media influencer accused of filming the torture of her baby to gain money allegedly manufactured symptoms causing the toddler to have brain surgery, a magistrate has heard. The 34-year-old Queensland woman is charged with torturing an infant and posting videos of the little girl online to build a social media following and solicit donations. A decision on her bail application in a Brisbane court was yesterday postponed after the magistrate opted to take more time before making a decision in an effort “not to be overwhelmed” by the nature of allegations “so offensive to right-thinking people.” The Sunshine Coast woman —
BORDER SERVICES: With the US-funded International Rescue Committee telling clinics to shut by tomorrow, Burmese refugees face sudden discharge from Thai hospitals Healthcare centers serving tens of thousands of refugees on the Thai-Myanmar border have been ordered shut after US President Donald Trump froze most foreign aid last week, forcing Thai officials to transport the sickest patients to other facilities. The International Rescue Committee (IRC), which funds the clinics with US support, told the facilities to shut by tomorrow, a local official and two camp committee members said. The IRC did not respond to a request for comment. Trump last week paused development assistance from the US Agency for International Development for 90 days to assess compatibility with his “America First” policy. The freeze has thrown
TESTING BAN: Satellite photos show a facility in the Chinese city of Mianyang that could aid nuclear weapons design and power generation, a US researcher said China appears to be building a large laser-ignited fusion research center in the southwestern city of Mianyang, experts at two analytical organizations said, a development that could aid nuclear weapons design and work exploring power generation. Satellite photos show four outlying “arms” that would house laser bays, and a central experiment bay that would hold a target chamber containing hydrogen isotopes the powerful lasers would fuse together, producing energy, said Decker Eveleth, a researcher at US-based independent research organization CNA Corp. It is a similar layout to the US$3.5 billion US National Ignition Facility (NIF) in northern California, which in 2022 generated
RSS