The Land of Steppes and Cossacks
Petrykivka is an urban-type settlement in the Dnipropetrovsk region, on the right bank of the Dnipro. The first reliable documentary mentions of the settlement date back to 1772; its name is linked to Petro Kalnyshevsky, the last ataman of the Zaporozhian Sich, who was involved in founding the settlement on the site of a former Zaporozhian winter camp. The village held the status of a state-owned settlement and never knew serfdom, and three major fairs were held there every year. This free status of the population and its active trade fostered the development of distinctive local crafts, among which decorative painting later emerged.
Folk Origins: Chepurushky and Malyovky
The Petrykivka region has long been known for its folk craftspeople. At the Petrykivka fairs, held three times a year, peasants bought painted ceramics and wooden utensils, banduras and spinning wheels, chests and towels decorated with floral patterns, and, later, the malyovky themselves.
The most capable housewives — those who could do everything well, from whitewashing a hut to weaving cloth, embroidering a towel, or painting a wall — were called chepurushky in Petrykivka. It was they who passed the craft of painting from generation to generation, to daughters and daughters-in-law, and the works of the chepurushky who specialized in painting huts and their interiors were valued most highly.
From the late 19th century, once bright aniline dyes became widely available, the chepurushky began transferring their floral patterns from whitewashed walls onto thin sheets of paper — malyovky. These drawings were easy to carry and sell at fairs, and over time they gradually displaced mural painting altogether. Wall painting itself declined with the onset of collectivization, when peasant life largely lost its former joy — and, with it, the desire to decorate the home.
The First Researchers
Only at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, as interest in folk art grew, did the anonymous paintings of village craftswomen acquire named authorship. Historian and ethnographer Dmytro Yavornytskyi of Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipro) was among the first to reveal the beauty of the Petrykivka flower to his contemporaries: by 1905, the museum he had founded in Katerynoslav already held numerous household items decorated with Petrykivka painting, and by 1923 the museum's collection included roughly a thousand ornamental designs.
At Yavornytskyi's request, the artist Yevheniia Evenbakh made watercolour copies of wall paintings during expeditions in 1911 and 1913, and commissioned small paper drawings from local craftswomen — it is with such drawings by Tetyana Pata that the acquaintance with Petrykivka ornamental art begins in museum collections. Further research was carried out by the art historian Yevheniia Berchenko (author of the book "Wall Painting of Ukrainian Huts," 1930) and, in the 1960s–70s, by B. Butnyk-Siverskyi and Nataliia Hlukhenska, who wrote the first monographic albums on Tetyana Pata and Fedir Panko.
A particularly important role in reviving the tradition was played by a local drawing teacher, Oleksandr Statyva (1898–1966). Even before the landmark 1936 exhibition, he had begun collecting samples of the chepurushky's work and doing outreach among the village community, insisting on the artistic value of this craft. In the early 1930s, Statyva gathered and sent a hundred samples of Petrykivka painting to the Kyiv Museum of Ukrainian Art — this selection caught the attention of curators in the capital and later became one of the reasons the Petrykivka craftswomen were invited to Kyiv (see the section on the 1936 exhibition below). Later, in 1966, Statyva wrote the monograph "Master of Decorative Painting Nadiya Bilokin" — one of the first scholarly biographical works on Petrykivka craftswomen — and he also helped organize the village's school of decorative drawing.
Nature as a Source of Inspiration
The masters of Petrykivka painting have always been united by a deep love for their native land. In the floral interlacing of the Petrykivka pattern one can sense the fragrance of the herbs, berries, and flowers of the free steppes of the Dnipro region.
At the same time, the Petrykivka pattern was never a direct reflection of natural motifs — it is a world born of the folk artists' creative imagination: fantastical tsybulky ("onions") and kucheryavky ("curlicues"), roses and ferns, firebirds and turtle-doves, owls and cuckoos, goldfish swimming out of a mysterious blue ocean. The colour scheme settled into a combination of three principal colours — yellow, red, and green — typically set against a white background, and the motifs carry their own symbolism: the flower as the pinnacle of nature's beauty, the guelder rose and hollyhock as symbols of a young woman's beauty, the cuckoo as a symbol of time's eternal motion.
The Three Petrykivka Charmers
Tetyana Pata, Nadiya Bilokin, and Iryna Pylypenko — three remarkable craftswomen whose names were the first to become widely known.
Tetyana Pata was a unique phenomenon even among the most outstanding chepurushky — not only an artist with an inimitable style of her own, but also the founder of an independent school of decorative painting. Born into a poor peasant family of eight children, she mastered the art of painting huts and stoves from a young age, creating her paradise gardens of wild and cultivated flowers and guelder rose "by eye," yet with great virtuosity.
Nadiya Bilokin perceived and created her pictorial world quite differently — she was a true folk master of detail and composition.
Iryna Pylypenko was the most traditional of the three; her art is most closely tied to the origins of Petrykivka painting, from the period when the malyovka still spoke the language of mural painting.
Working alongside them were Paraska Pavlenko (who continued working into her hundredth year), Nadiia Tymoshenko, Hanna Pylypenko-Isaieva, Pelaheia Hlushchenko, and Vasyl Vovk — each adding their own distinctive voice to the shared chorus of Petrykivka masters.
Natural Paints and Tools
The Petrykivka chepurushky made their paints from whatever the land provided: red from cherry juice, green from couch-grass and black nightshade leaves, blue from snowdrop flowers, and various shades of yellow from sunflower petals, onion peel, and apple-tree bark. The paints were mixed with egg yolk and milk, and fixed with cherry gum or beet sugar.
From the late 19th century, bright aniline dyes came into use, employed mainly for malyovky on paper; watercolour and gouache only became widespread in the postwar years. Brushes were made from reed and bulrush stems, and from homemade brushes of cat hair — known as "kvachyky" — while bare fingers were also used. Remarkably, Petrykivka masters still favour these same tools today over factory-made brushes.
Technique
Petrykivka painting is done without any preliminary sketch — the master works in a single confident stroke of the brush, and correcting a failed mark is practically impossible. Two basic strokes form the core vocabulary of Petrykivka brushwork: the stroke "away from oneself" (the "comb," or hrebinchyk) and the stroke "toward oneself" (the "grain," or zernyatko); combining several of these strokes produces the characteristic "little nut" (horishok) element. Plump berries are traditionally applied with a fingertip, leaving a slightly convex mark that creates an illusion of volume.
A composition is always built asymmetrically: large clusters of flowers or berries are sketched first, at the centre of the sheet, and smaller elements are added afterward — buds, leaves, delicate "fern" fronds, and the finest strokes and blades of grass known as "milloch." Light and shadow are achieved by the simplest technical means: the upper part of a petal or leaf is painted in a lighter tone, the lower part in a darker one, the colours mixed directly on the brush.
Traditional compositional schemes in Petrykivka painting include the "rug" (a dense rectangular pattern), the "wreath" or "vensel," the "bouquet," and the "runner" (an endless ribbon-like border). Harmonious contrast plays an important role in building a composition: a straight line alternates with a curved one, a sharp form with a rounded one, and the dominant colour — usually red — is balanced by supporting colours, green and yellow, or green and blue.
Recognition: The 1936 Kyiv Exhibition
The first major exhibition of folk art was held in Kyiv in 1936 — and it was there, with the help of Oleksandr Statyva, who a year earlier had sent a selection of Petrykivka paintings to the Kyiv Museum of Ukrainian Art, that a group of Petrykivka craftswomen led by Tetyana Pata was invited. In Kyiv, these works were recognized as having significant artistic potential, and the exhibition soon travelled to Moscow and Leningrad as well.
Iryna Pylypenko and Hanna Isaieva received First Class Diplomas; Tetyana Pata and Nadiya Bilokin returned home with the title of Master of Folk Art. The trip proved a turning point: contact with masterpieces of world art and the exchange of experience with masters from other regions of Ukraine qualitatively changed the Petrykivka malyovka itself — from a simple decoration for a village hut, it became an independent work of art. In 1936–1937, Tetyana Pata was invited to paint the interiors of the Kyiv Art Institute, and together with Nadiya Bilokin and Hanna Pavlenko she decorated the Ukrainian Pavilion at the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition in Moscow.
The Petrykivka School of Decorative Drawing
Founded through the efforts of Oleksandr Statyva, the Petrykivka School of Decorative Drawing opened in September 1936 and played a decisive role in shaping the craft. Among its most notable students were Halyna Prudnikova, Vekla Kucherenko, Yavdokha Kliupa, Ivan Zavhorodnii, Mariia Shyshatska, Oleksandra Pikush, Nadiia Shulyk, Fedir Panko, Vasyl Sokolenko, and Zoia Kudish. The school operated until 1941, when its work was cut short by the war.
In the 1950s–60s, thanks to numerous exhibitions, Petrykivka art travelled beyond Ukraine's borders, and the most talented folk masters were admitted as full members of the professional artists' union.
Porcelain Painting: The Kyiv Group
In the postwar years, a group of young students of Tetyana Pata moved from Petrykivka to Kyiv — Pelaheia Hlushchenko, Marfa Tymchenko, Vira Pavlenko, Hanna Pavlenko-Chernychenko, and Vira Klymenko-Zhukova. Their work became closely tied to the Kyiv Experimental Ceramic and Art Factory: with the arrival of these Petrykivka artists, a new stage began in the history of Ukrainian porcelain, as the achievements of folk ornamental art were systematically transferred onto porcelain for the first time.
Vira Pavlenko (1912–1991) worked in a more graphic, miniature style, introducing figures of Ukrainian girls in national dress into her compositions. Hanna Pavlenko-Chernychenko (1919–2008), a laureate of the Kateryna Bilokur Prize, combined porcelain painting with easel drawing, composing refined two- and three-colour "vazon" bouquets. Pelaheia Hlushchenko (1908–1983) taught at the Kyiv School of Applied Arts from 1937, and her work is marked by a more graphic, dense, and refined line — a result of her parallel work in printing and book design. Vira Klymenko-Zhukova (1921–1965) boldly introduced motifs unusual for the tradition in the early 1960s — tulips, plums, pears, peppers — along with a new colour palette built on pink, blue, and violet.
A distinct body of work developed within this milieu belonging to Marfa Tymchenko (1922–2009), People's Artist of Ukraine and laureate of the Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine. For more than thirty years she painted porcelain dinner sets, platters, and vases at the Kyiv Experimental Ceramic and Art Factory, and from the early 1970s she turned increasingly to decorative-pictorial landscape and folk-picture themes, combining the ornamental tradition with narrative painting.
The Druzhba Factory: Between Souvenir and Art
In the postwar years, an industrial line of development emerged in Petrykivka itself. In 1958, Fedir Panko brought together self-employed craftspeople into a lacquer-painting workshop at the "Vilna Selianka" embroiderers' artel; by the mid-1960s, that workshop had grown into the "Druzhba" factory of art products.
The factory's main line of production was under-lacquer painting on pressed sawdust, papier-mâché, and plastic — mostly small boxes, decorative plates, and other souvenirs coated in black lacquer. It was during this period, under Fedir Panko as the factory's chief artist, that a widespread but historically inaccurate notion took hold: that Petrykivka painting means a pattern on a black background. Traditionally, a black background was never characteristic of Petrykivka painting; this technique was a product of factory-souvenir production logic. Painting gradually lost its connection to peasant life and became mass-produced merchandise.
This was not a personal artistic failure on Panko's part — it was simply what the times demanded: factory production had to compete with cheaper industrial souvenirs, and without standardization and adaptation to a new material, the Petrykivka craft might simply not have survived economically.
In the early 1970s, Vasyl Sokolenko changed the situation at the factory: he took over the lacquer-painting workshop at Druzhba and returned production to the traditional material — wood — leaving the natural colour of the wood as the background instead of black lacquer. At the same time, Fedir Panko founded his own experimental creative workshop in 1970 at the Dnipropetrovsk Art Production Combine, where he focused no longer on mass-produced souvenirs but on high-quality, authored pieces and his own artistic pursuits — including a series of panels based on Ukrainian folk songs.
Vasyl Sokolenko
Vasyl Sokolenko (1922–2018) graduated from the Petrykivka School of Decorative Drawing in 1941, having studied directly under Tetyana Pata. In the postwar years he worked as a methodologist at the regional house of folk art and organized an art studio in the village of Ivanivka, and from 1962 he taught at the Petrykivka branch of the Dnipropetrovsk children's art school.
For nearly twenty years — from 1971 to 1992 — Sokolenko served as chief artist at the Druzhba factory, and it was he who moved production away from black lacquer toward painting on light-coloured wood. He was the first to revive wood-based decorative work on an industrial scale — vases, plates, salad bowls, ladles, spoons — acting as the author of both the painting and the form itself, personally teaching wood-turners how to make the pieces he needed.
Sokolenko is also known as a master of the so-called "Petrykivka poster" — graphic works that combined decorative ornament with a clear poster-like composition and, often, a narrative or symbolic content (a characteristic example is his 1959 work "A Cuckoo Among Flowers"). It was on his initiative that a museum of the history of decorative painting opened at the Druzhba factory, which the master himself jokingly called "our own Louvre."
After retiring, Sokolenko built a private house-museum on his own estate — the "Sokolenko Folk Museum" — which holds around 600 exhibits, including works by his wife, the craftswoman Hanna Sokolenko, with whom he raised five children. The estate remains one of the stops on Petrykivka's tourist map today.
A New Generation: 1970s–1990s
The 1970s marked a period of generational change: a wave of talented young artists appeared at the Druzhba factory and in the experimental workshop — Nina Turchyn, Vira Tezyk, Tamara Kudish, Anatolii and Nina Chernuskyi, Nina Hordieieva, Nataliia Kaliuha, Liubov Shtanii, Mariia Kravets, Uliana Skliar, Vitalii Panko, and Liubov Bai.
Among the leaders of this generation were Volodymyr Hlushchenko, Andrii and Mariia Pikush, and Hanna Samarska. Andrii Pikush absorbed the energy of his teachers Panko and Sokolenko, as well as the experience of the Petrykivka elders, especially Tetyana Pata; he later opened up the long-forgotten field of ceramics for Petrykivka painting, along with the techniques of batik, stained glass, and blown glass. Hanna Samarska, who was not born in Petrykivka but in Bohdanivka in the Kyiv region, studied under Kateryna Bilokur from 1952 and brought her own, highly detailed authorial style to Petrykivka painting.
The 1980s brought full creative freedom — Natalia Rybak, Valentyna Panko, Nadiia Vasylkivska, Valentyna Karpets, Olena Zinchuk, Tetiana Lapshyn, Iryna Nazarenko, and Valentyna Milenko all came vividly into their own, alongside the Statyva sisters — Valentyna, Lidiia, Mariia, and Nataliia.
Petrykivka Dynasties
The 1980s and 90s gave rise to genuine creative dynasties, in which every generation of a family took up the craft — the Shyshatski, Panko, Sokolenko, Pikush, Chernuskyi, Tymoshenko, Statyva, Skliar, and Rybak families among them. Thanks to them, the tradition continues to pass from parents to children and grandchildren, generation after generation.
Petrykivka Painting Today
By the end of the 20th century, Petrykivka painting had fully lost its connection to peasant life and become, simultaneously, an independent form of authored art and a souvenir industry. In 1994, on the initiative of Andrii Pikush, a production and creative association called "Petrykivka" was formed on the basis of the experimental workshops; in 1998 it merged with the experimental workshop to become today's Petrykivka Centre of Folk Art, which today brings together several dozen of the village's leading masters. It was an exhibition prepared by the Centre's masters that formed the basis of Petrykivka painting's submission to UNESCO.
At the same time, the industrial line of development went into decline: the Druzhba factory halted operations in 2004 and was formally liquidated in 2006 — a fate typical of many Soviet-era folk art enterprises after Ukraine gained independence. Individual authored practice and the teaching of the tradition, however, did not stop: since 2012, the Dnipro Theatre and Art College has offered a dedicated specialization in Petrykivka painting, taught by Honoured Master of Folk Art of Ukraine Tetiana Harkava — a student of Fedir Panko who considers herself part of the fourth generation of masters, and her own students part of the fifth.
Halyna Nazarenko (b. 1968) has also made a significant contribution to Petrykivka painting's contemporary life. A member of the National Union of Folk Art Masters of Ukraine, she has painted church interiors in Kyiv and taken part in dozens of exhibitions in France, the United States, Georgia, China, and elsewhere; following exhibitions in France, she was admitted to the Association of Contemporary Art of Morestel. Nazarenko actively advocates for Petrykivka painting to be recognized as "high art," not merely a souvenir craft, and emphasizes the need for a contemporary approach to promoting it — including through new cultural spaces in Petrykivka itself.
On December 5, 2013, at the eighth session of the UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, held in Baku, Petrykivka painting was inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity — making Petrykivka the first entry from Ukraine to receive this status. That same year, an exhibition titled "Petrykivka Painting — The Colour of Tradition" was held at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. The craft became a symbol of the country well beyond art circles: Ukraine's postal service issues stamps featuring reproductions of Petrykivka patterns, and in 2016 the National Bank of Ukraine issued commemorative coins titled "Petrykivka Painting." Since 2007, an annual folk-art festival called "Petrykivskyi Dyvotsvit" ("Petrykivka's Magic Bloom") has been held in Petrykivka (and, in 2013–2014, in Dnipro), and it has since grown into an international event.
Today's masters carry on the tradition with the same tools their predecessors used a century ago — handmade cat-hair brushes, reed stems, their own fingers — while also working with acrylic paints and painting on glass, metal, and textiles, exploring new surfaces and formats. Significant collections of Petrykivka painting are held today by the Dnipro Art Museum, the Dmytro Yavornytskyi National Historical Museum of Dnipro, and the Petrykivka Museum of Ethnography, Everyday Life, and Applied Art.
Conclusion
One can encounter the masters of Petrykivka painting not only in Petrykivka itself — rich collections of their work are held in museums across Dnipro, Kyiv, and other Ukrainian cities. Petrykivka decorative painting is one of the unique phenomena of Ukrainian artistic culture: an art free of foreign admixture or influence, embodying the spiritual wealth and creative generosity of the Ukrainian people, and one that continues to develop today, more than a century after the first recorded malyovky.