Anatol Petrytsky

Biography Petrytsky was born in the family of a railwayman. Due to his father's paralytic illness, the family had to settle in a colony for disabled people in Poltava Oblast, where Anatol spent his childhood. Later, he was sent to an orphanage in Kyiv. Living in the city, Anatol was able to visit Kyiv Opera, and soon started creating amateur plays together with other orphans. Having noticed his talent, Petrytskyi's tutors financed his artistic education.

Starting from the mid-1930s, Petrytskyi was forced to justify his "formalism" before the increasingly totalitarian Soviet regime. For instance, while recognizing the high artistic level of Pablo Picasso's works, he called them "alien" in the class sense. Despite his earlier participation in the modernist and avantgarde movements, Petrytskyi continued to be valued by the government, receiving the title of People's Artist of USSR in 1944 and two Stalin Prizes in 1949 and 1951. During the Second World War he received permission from Nikita Khrushchev to join the Red Army in order to create sketches for a future monumental painting dedicated to the Battle of Kursk.

More than 500 of Petrytsky's works of stage design belong to the collection of the Museum of Theatre, Music and Cinema of Ukraine. Additionally, some of his works are kept at the National Art Museum of Ukraine.