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Taras Shevchenko

Encyclopedia of the life and works

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Painting

Shevchenko's artistic heritage for us is not less valuable than his poetry. Do not forget that natural gift of drawing was the very first awakened in him and brought him out of the abyss of slavery in artistic elite.

His art works are diverse. Already during his lifetime Shevchenko had a well-deserved honor as outstanding portrait painter. He also performed a large series of landscapes, architectural sketches (including ukrainian antiquity), book illustrations. He was the first of Ukrainian who mastered the etching technique and created in it a number of famous compositions.

Since Shevchenko was not just an outstanding artist, but an outstanding ukrainian artist, in his painting powerfully entered politics. His art project "Picturesque Ukraine" experienced failure (30 years later, this project renewed by Napoleon Orda, which created a great series of pictures of polish monuments in Ukraine). Tsar's disgrace in 1847 banned him not only write but also draw. Despite this prohibition Shevchenko during exile in Kazakhstan painted a lot and became the first painter of this land. With great sympathy and warmth he painted life of Kazakhs, and therefore enjoys great respect Kazakhs until today.

It is noticeable that for all his exile Shevchenko made no picture that would glorify valor of the Russian army and among all his works – which is about 1200 images! – there are no sketchs of Petersburg architecture, which was strange to him, despite many years residence in this city.

Unable to destroy ukrainian artist Shevchenko by refusing, Russians decided to achieve this by appropriation his work. Thus, in the "History of the russian art" (Moscow: 1955, t. 1, p. 438 – 441) work of Shevchenko paid 2.5 page. This large survey in two volumes written by the best team of experts under the aegis of USSR Academy of Arts. On the thoughts of these authors, creativity Shevchenko belong to russian art. Period.

The ideological struggle continues. Our web publication is intended to show the world the great ukrainian artist – Taras Shevchenko.