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Borys Butnyk Siverskyi

Biography

Borys Butnyk-Siverskyi was born on March 16, 1901 in Chernihiv, in the family of the artist Stepan Butnyk. He spent his childhood in the neighborhood of Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi’s family. In 1917, he graduated from the Chernihiv Real School, and in 1926 from the Kyiv Archaeological Institute. Candidate of Historical Sciences (1946). Member of the Union of Soviet Artists of Ukraine (now the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine).

He worked in the Chernihiv Provincial Administration, the All-Ukrainian Committee for the Protection of Antiquities and Art, the Kyiv Central Archives, as well as in museums and archives in Vinnytsia and Poltava. These studies resulted in his first monograph, Novhorod-Siverskyi (1920). It was after the publication of this work that Borys officially added “Siverskyi” to his surname.

Since 1922, he worked in the Cabinet of Art of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, in 1924 he organized and headed the Cabinet for the Study of Children’s Graphic Art, and since 1931 he headed the Cabinet of Mass Revolutionary Art. In 1933-1939, he was assigned to Baku and worked as an academic secretary at the Institute of History, Archeology and Ethnography of the Azerbaijan SSR. In 1939-1940, he was the artistic director of the Museum of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Leningrad.

Together with his wife Mariia, he survived the siege of Leningrad. In July 1942, the family was evacuated to Altai (Katanda village). In June 1944, they returned to Kyiv, where Borys worked at the Institute of Art History, Folklore and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR from 1944 to 1970, and in 1944-1955 he served as head of the Department of Fine Arts. He was awarded the Diploma of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR (1968). He died on November 5, 1983 in Kyiv, buried at the Baikove Cemetery.

Contribution to Petrykivka Painting Research

Borys Butnyk-Siverskyi was one of the leading figures in Ukrainian art history of the twentieth century who laid the scientific foundations for the systematic study of Ukrainian folk decorative art, including Petrykivka painting, as a holistic phenomenon of national culture.

He worked in the fields of history of Ukrainian fine arts, folk decorative arts, posters, art criticism, and children’s art. In his fundamental works, he was the first to place Petrykivka in the broader context of Ukrainian decorative art of the 20th century, along with embroidery, weaving, ceramics, carpet weaving, wood carving, wall paintings, and decorative painting.

Along with Nataliia Hlukhenka, he is the leading compiler of popular albums about Ukrainian folk painting, which were published in large numbers in Kyiv in the 1960s and 1970s and significantly contributed to the popularization of petrykivka.

  • *Traditions and innovation in Ukrainian Soviet folk art - Moscow, 1964 (in Ukrainian)
  • *Ukrainian Soviet Folk Art - Kyiv, 1965, 1967
  • Ukrainian folk painting: Album - Kyiv, 1967 (co-authored)
  • Ukrainian Soviet Folk Art. 1941-1967 - Kyiv, 1970
  • Ukrainian Folk Drawings - Moscow, 1971 (in Russian)
  • *Ukrainian Soviet souvenir - Kyiv, 1972
  • *Marfa Tymchenko (album of creative works; compiler) - Kyiv, 1974 He took an active part in the preparation of the fundamental publication History of Ukrainian Art (volume 6, Kyiv, 1968) - one of the main academic works on the history of Ukrainian art of the XX century.

In total, he is the author of more than two dozen monographs and hundreds of articles. To this day, Butnyk-Siversky’s legacy remains the basis for Ukrainian art history and an integral part of the bibliography on the history of Petrykivka painting.

Category: Дослідники петриківського розпису