Dovzhenko Hryhorii

Hryhorii Dovzhenko (1899–1980) was a Ukrainian monumental painter and artist, who in the 1920s also worked as a film artist.

He was born in the village of Poltavka (now Bashtanka, Mykolaiv region). From 1922 to 1928 he studied at the Odesa Art Institute in the atelie of Danylo Krainiev and Teofil Fraierman, later continuing in the workshop of Hryhorii Komar. Influenced by the monumental art school of Mykhailo Boichuk, Dovzhenko participated in several mural projects in Odesa in the late 1920s. After graduation he worked at the First State Film Studio VUFKU in Odesa and later taught drawing and painting at the Kyiv Art Institute.

Following wartime evacuation to Tajikistan, he returned to Kyiv in 1945 and worked at the newly created Institute of Monumental Painting and Sculpture at the Academy of Architecture of the Ukrainian SSR, and he worked with monumental forms more and more often.

One of Hryhorii Dovzhenko’s most famous works is the monumental mosaic Kyi, Shchek, Khoryv and their sister Lybid on the façade of the cinema Rovesnyk (1971, later the Puppet Theatre).

Sources: https://vufku.org/names/hryhorii-dovzhenko, https://uk.wikipedia.org/