Ada Rybachuk

Ada Fedorivna Rybachuk (27 June 1931 – 22 September 2010) was a Ukrainian muralist, painter, sculptor and architect, Honored Artist of Ukraine, member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine, honorary member of the National Union of Cinematographers of Ukraine, honorary citizen of Naryan-Mar. She worked closely with her husband Volodymyr Melnychenko.

Biography

Childhood and education Rybachuk was born in 1931 in Kyiv. Fedir Rybachuk, Ada's father, personnel officer for the Soviet army, went through the war from the first day to the last one. The rest of the family had to evacuate to Kazakhstan, where Ada finished elementary school. Studied at the Taras Shevchenko Art High School in Kyiv, graduated with the highest honours receiving a gold medal. She studied at the Kiev State Art Institute, which was led by Oleksii Shovkunenko.

Along with other students, takes part in a summer internship led by Sergei Grosh in Vylkove, located at the delta of Dunai. Sketches created there were shown at the student exhibition, which resulted in the first art order – the creation of illustrations for Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak's book “Reindeer Fairy Tales”, published the same year by the Youth Publishing House.

Art

Since 1954 after her first trip to the North, Ada Rybachuk and her artistic partner and her husband Volodymyr Melnychenko have made several long trips to the North. In general, the artists lived and worked in the North, at intervals, about 7 years. During this time they created many graphic series and linocuts, illustrations for children's books on the beauty of Arctic nature and human life in the North.

In 1957 Rybachuk completed a sculpture, Shipboy, which shows a youth leaning from a rope ladder as if looking out to sea from a ship. That year she was awarded the silver medal at the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students.

Rybachuk, Melnychenko and the architect Avraam Miletsky began work on a Park of Memory in Kyiv. The Park of Memory was at the local crematorium at Baykoy Hill. The artwork covered and involved several huge sculptures. Rybachuk and Melnychenko's artwork was covered in concrete in 1982 by the authorities and was reported because of the size of this piece of censorship by the authorities. In 1988 Israel Goldstein made a documentary The Wall about their predicament and their campaign to have their work restored.

Rybachuk and her husband worked in a wide range of media, including their work at the Palace of Children and Youth in Slavy Square and the Central Bus Station in Kyiv.

Exhibitions Czechoslovakia (1957)