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Maria Prymachenko (1908–1997) was a Ukrainian village folk art painter, representative of naïve art. The performer was functional with drawing, embroidery and painting upon ceramics. Laureate of the National Prize of Ukraine named after T.G. Shevchenko. Honored Artist of the USSR back 1970, People’s Artist of Ukraine. Pablo Picasso said after visiting a Prymachenko exhibition in Paris,

“I bow down before the artistic miracle of this brilliant Ukrainian.”

The year 2009 was acknowledged the Year of Maria Prymachenko by the UNESCO.

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Maria Oksentiivna was born, grew up and spent her whole life in the village of Bolotnya, Kyiv region (not far from my town of Ivankiv). She was brought up in a creative family. Father was a carpenter, he created yard fences. Grandmother was engaged in painting Easter eggs. Mother was famous for her embroidery skills, which Maria herself learned, who wore shirts embroidered with her own hands. In addition to painting and embroidery, she was also engaged in ceramics and illustration.
In childhood, Maria fell ill with poliomyelitis. Later, all her life, the artist experienced terrible pain, more than one operation, and in almost all photos she was on crutches.
Prymachenko started drawing seriously at the age of 17. She found bluish clay with which she painted her own house. Everyone liked the girl's work - soon she received her first order. Piglets were thanked for painting the house of Maria's neighbors. Later, it was this piglet that helped her whole family survive in times of famine.
It is interesting that, in general, the artist was poorly educated: due to illness, she completed only four years of education. In the captions to the paintings, she practically did not put punctuation marks and used a folk idiom.

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Maria Prymachenko is a representative of Ukrainian naive art. Maria's works fascinate with an incredibly good imagination, accurate, original color and mysterious skill.
Sensual and relaxed, her paintings are the self-expression of the subconscious, framed in a childlike form that has never been abandoned in her work. She was inspired by embroideries and the environment, she was a peasant who adored Ukraine and never left her home. Even during the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, when her native village fell under the 30-kilometer evacuation zone, she stayed with her son and painted a picture of a cow in cowhides eating grass poisoned by radiation.

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The artist’s earliest creative impulse links her quite literally to the land beneath her feet.

“Once, as a young girl, I was tending a gaggle of geese,”

Prymachenko recalled of her first drawings.

“When I got with them to a sandy beach, on the bank of the river, after crossing a field dotted with wildflowers, I began to draw real and imaginary flowers with a stick on the sand… Later, I decided to paint the walls of my house using natural pigments. After that, I’ve never stopped drawing and painting.”

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Miraculous Universe of Maria Prymachenko

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Miraculous Universe of Maria Prymachenko

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An interesting video about the wonderful world of the artist!

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Книга-мандрівка. Україна

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ОСТАПЧУК про чудернацький всесвіт МАРІЇ ПРИМАЧЕНКО. 6 серія «Книга-мандрівка. Україна».

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A historical and local history museum was built in Ivankiv, where the works of prominent countrymen of the Ivankiv region were kept. Of course, there were paintings by Maria Prymachenko.
With the beginning of the full-scale invasion of russia on the territory of Ukraine, everything changed. On the fourth day of russia’s invasion, the Ukrainian media published the heartbreaking news that russian occupiers destroyed the museum of local history in Ivankiv, which contained the paintings of Maria Prymachenko, the world-renowned representative of naïve art. This story, however, has an unexpected and joyful plot twist: the locals, risking their lives, saved some of the talented artist’s works.

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To save Maria Prymachenko's paintings • Ukrainer in English

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"The dove has spread her wings, wants peace on earth" (1982)

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Prymachenko’s paintings called for peace

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Prymachenko’s paintings called for peace

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The artist's paintings also have the theme of peace and call for it.
Maria was personally familiar with the war. The traumas of war deeply and directly effected Prymachenko’s life. Soon after meeting her partner Vasyl Marynchuk, in 1941, the artist would give birth to a son, Fedor. But the young family would soon be shattered. A soldier, Marynchuk was sent to the front lines of the Second World War and would lose his life. Prymachenko’s brother, too, would be shot by Nazis.

In addition, Prymachenko was left with her young son and old parents in a dilapidated house. In post-war times, the artist did not fit into the boundaries of the then creativity, which glorified socialist reality.

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Prymachenko is a national symbol of Ukraine. Her works were depicted on postage stamps and a jubilee coin. Ukrainian astronomer Klym Churyumov even named the planet in her honor.
The art of female artists is admired, because it expresses the hope and pride of the nation. But the past, about which her images tell, is not an innocent era of a happy, harmonious village.
Copies of her works were demonstrated during many rallies in support of Ukraine in the world. One can only guess how the outstanding artist would portray putin's terror.