Experimental Workshop of Petrykivka Painting
In 1970, the renowned Petrykivka painting master Fedir Savovych Panko left his position as head artist at the Druzhba Petrykivka Painting Factory and, together with several other artists from that enterprise, founded a new institution — the Experimental Workshop of Petrykivka Painting under the Dnipropetrovsk Artistic and Production Combine of the Dnipropetrovsk branch of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine. While the painting factory was located on the outskirts of the village, the Experimental Workshop occupied a new two-story building in the center of Petrykivka. Unlike the factory, where most products were made of pressed sawdust, the workshop primarily produced painted wooden items (covered with lacquer after painting) and works on paper — many of them on light backgrounds rather than the black backgrounds used at the factory. Work at the Experimental Workshop was more creatively free and varied than at the factory, where most rank-and-file masters spent their time repeatedly copying works by the enterprise’s leading artists, even though wages at the factory were significantly higher.
Besides the founder, the workshop employed such notable masters as Hanna Isayeva, Nadiya Shulyk, Nina Turchyn, Andriy Pikush, Mariya Pikush, Tetyana Harkava, Valentyna Deka, Lidiya Bulavin, Mariya Yanenko, Nataliya Statyva-Zharko, Valentyna Panko, Halyna Nazarenko, Olena Yarmoliuk, and others.
In 1998, the team and the building of the Experimental Workshop became the foundation for a new institution — the Petrykivka Folk Art Center.
