Students of Mykhailo Boichuk

In an article about Sofia Nalepinska published over a decade ago in the magazine Fine Art Serhii Bilokin, historian from Kyiv, wrote: “When you read in the OGPU-NKVD files that the Bolsheviks destroyed Ukrainians for defending Ukraine or, as they were saying then, for Ukrainian (surely bourgeois) nationalism it is perceived almost like a normal fact. There is certain logic to that. I am personally touched by the facts when people, who had no obvious ties with Ukraine, like, for example, art historian of German origin Fedir Ernst died for Ukraine. Sofia Nalepinska did not either have Ukrainian blood.”

Sofia NALEPINSKA was born on July 30, 1884 to szlachta patriotic family in Polish city of Lodz, which then belonged to the Russian Empire. Her father Oleksandr Nalepinsky, graduate of Saint Petersburg Institute of Railway Engineering from Warsaw and young mother Sofia, piano player (born Rior, French by birth) raised children in the spirit of “Polish national democratic patriotism.”

In 1890 the Nalepinskys family moved to Saint Petersburg because the father got a new “voluntary-compulsory” designation. The daughter of the Ministry of Railways official Sofia was home-schooled, knew German and French well, and externally received gymnasium education. “Tall, slim, and slender she maybe was not a young lady of classic beauty but she certainly had something inspiring, exciting, and attractive.”

After the training course in Saint Petersburg studio of the impressionist artist Jan Ciaglinski in the Society for the Promotion of Art, three young Polish friends – Sofia Nalepinska, Sofia Sehno, and Sofia Baudouin de Courtenay in 1906 went to Europe to study the art of painting. First they went to Munich to study in Debschitz Art School and in the Academy of Professor Heidner. After that they went to Paris. Later Hanna Nalepinska-Pecharkovska recalled that this was a rather brave act of emancipated ladies “in that era of moral virtues full of prejudice.”

Young students of Academie Ranson of 1908-09 after settling in furnished rooms on Campagne Premiere Street 9, where poets and artists from the newly arrived bohemia lived, meet their neighbor – a native of Ternopil Mykhailo Boichuk.

Here in Paris Nalepinska fell in love with Boichuk, her fellow-teacher, and this determined her whole life from then on. “Yes, maybe he was a genius,” wrote Hanna Nalepinska-Pecharkovska. “But from the point of view of, let’s say, our mother he was a misfortune for my sister, who did not want to listen about leaving him and going home. Despite all her worries, our mother realized that Boichuk was a great artistic figure.”

In 1910 Nalepinska together with Boichuk and Kasperovych, after taking a tour to museums of Florence, Ravenna, Venice, and Vienna, returned to Galicia, where from time to time she worked on her specialty – graphics, portraits, and also works on securing ancient paintings in the museums of Lviv and Kyiv.

“We must also remember the fact that Boichuk was completely fascinated with Ukrainian ideas,” Nalepinska’s sister continues her memoirs. “To work and to be with him also meant renouncing your own homeland (Poland). You’d have to love him the way my sister did to renounce all of that.”

After the World War I broke out Nalepinska returned to Saint Petersburg and in December of 1917 she moved to Kyiv. There she married Boichuk at the Greek Catholic wooden church in Novo-Pavlivska Street and after their son Petro was born on July 26, 1918 in the uncertain time of the Civil War she moved to Myrhorod. There she found a job of an art teacher at the Art and Industrial Institute.

In November of 1922 Nalepinska-Boichuk became the head of Block Printing Studio at Kyiv Institute of Plastic Art and in 1924 she became a co-founder of the first Art Design School in Ukraine. One of her first students Vira Bura-Matsapura recalled once: “Sofia Nalepinska was a teacher of high erudition. During classes she would sit next to a student with a pencil in hand to explain and show how to change a drawing, emphasize details, and achieve smoothness of lines. She advised us to take topics for our compositions from real life well-known to us.”

Developing the technique of wood-cut engraving, the artist created graphic easel sheets Guitarist (1921), Young Worker, and Malashka (1926). These compositions are notable for their monumentalism, restrained lines, and exaggerated flatness. “Maximum effect achieved with minimum means,” this was how boichukist Vasyl Sedliar characterized her work. At All-Ukrainian Exhibition ARMU (1927) and at All-Ukrainian Anniversary Exhibition (1928) the art critics praised the following works of the artist: On Vacations, Spinner, Kateryna, I Just Turned Thirteen…, Before the White Guards Attacked, and Hungry Children. Later these graphic sheets were displayed at international exhibitions of contemporary printmaking in Florence, Brussels, Vienna and London, Berlin and Stockholm, Venice, Zurich, and other European cultural centers.

In the field of book design Nalepinska-Boichuk created illustrations for the poem Kateryna by Taras Shevchenko, works of Nikolai Gogol The Night Before Christmas and A Terrible Vengeance, for Lead Ring by Stepan Vasylchenko (1928-30), and others.

At that time Nalepinska-Boichuk became a famous Ukrainian master of wood engraving, professor of Kyiv Art Institute, who raised a pleiad of students and founded the School of Ukrainian Modern Engraving. It is clear that for the Bolsheviks, who fought against Ukrainian culture and by all means destroyed it, the artist also became a “hostile element,” just like Boichuk. On June 12, 1937 at night officers stormed in the apartment of KAI professor on Komunistychna Street, 12 (now Bankova Street) with a search warrant. They found a stack of letters. Nalepinska-Boichuk was arrested on charges of “involvement in national-fascist organization.”

That same night the first formal interrogation took place. When Nalepinska was asked about her nationality she replied: “Ukrainian (parents are Poles).”

Mykola KASPEROVYCH was an artist and a restorer of Ukrainian iconography, student and companion of Boichuk. The future artist was born in 1885 (the exact date and time were not identified) on a farm Lapin Rih near Kozelets in a noble landowning family. He received his first art training in Strohanov Art School in Moscow (1901-05). From 1905 till 1909 he studied in Krakow Academy of Fine Arts with impressionist artist Jozef Pankiewicz. He graduated from the Academy with a silver medal. In fall of that year Kasperovych moved to Paris and became an active member of artistic environment of “Ukrainian Community.” According to the “brilliant archivist and historian of Ukrainian Community in Paris” Yevhen Bachynsky, Kasperovych was “a very decent and well-bred young man, perhaps, the most talented of Boichuk’s students.” His works were displayed in the Salon of Independent Artist with a group of “neo-Byzantists” in April 1910. It attracted the attention of the local artistic elite and he was invited to the “International Union of Artists and Writers.”

In August of 1910 together with Boichuk and Nalepinska he moved to Lviv. There under the guidance of Ilarion Sventsytsky he began working on restoration of icons and fresco painting at the National Museum, improving his theoretical knowledge. Around this time Kasperovych and Boichuk “created a wonderful image of Saint John and the composition Sheep,” recalled Yevhen Bachynsky. “These were their first joint projects. Where are they now?”

In 1913 at the invitation of the Russian Archaeological Society together with Boichuk and his younger brother Tymko, Kasperovych went to work on the restoration of icons in the Church of Three Saints in the village of Lemesh in Chernihiv region – the Razumovskys family nest. However once the World War I broke out the work was stopped.

In December 1917, Kasperovych received an invitation to conduct lectures at the Boichuk’s Icons and Frescoes Studio in the newly founded Academy of Arts in Kyiv. Meanwhile, on the recommendation of Vasyl Krychevsky, the artist teaches drawing and special disciplines at Myrhorod Art and Ceramics Technical School (1918-22). In 1921 Kasperovych was promoted to professor of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and academic restorer of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. His teaching career was extremely diverse: apart from teaching restorers in studios, he conducted seminars on old Ukrainian art at the Department of Arts of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, on museum management and restoration at “All-Ukrainian Museum Town.”

Artist’s research and teaching activities are closely associated with his art work – paintings created in the iconographic technique, which lean towards artistic symbols of Protorenaissance, carry a powerful charge of spirituality, close to Ukrainian sacred art (sketch for mural Architect of the Universe, 1910; Ducks, Girl’s Head, Portrait of a Wife, the 1920s). Artist’s paintings were displayed at the exhibition of modern Ukrainian Graphics ANUM in Lviv (1932).

After long years of work in the restoration studio of the State Historical and Cultural Reserve “All-Ukrainian Museum Town” in Kyiv (1927-30), All-Ukrainian Art Reproduction Studio, art museums in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Chernihiv (1928-37) Kasperovych laid the foundation for scientific restoration in Ukraine. The principles used by the artist were in many ways ahead of the understanding of the purpose and means of scientific restoration of that time. His last major art work was restoration of Vrubel’s interior of the Saint Cyril Church in Kyiv (1935). As a member of the All-Ukrainian Committee of Archaeologists, the artist oversaw the state of preservation of ancient monuments in Kyiv. Kasperovych was arrested much later after the rest of boichukists on March 3, 1938 on charges of involvement in “Petliura led rebel and counter-revolutionary national-fascist organization.”