Mykola Hlushchenko

Mykola Hlushchenko (; 17 September 1901 – 31 October 1977) was a Ukrainian artist. He was a winner of the Shevchenko National Prize in 1972.

Biography

Hlushchenko was born in Novomoskovske, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire, a town originally established by Zaporozhian Cossacks and currently known under its original name of Samar. At the early age Mykola moved to Yuzivka where he attended classes in drawing and became fond of artwork by Illia Ripyn and Serhiy Vasylkivsky. After being forcibly mobilized into the Volunteer Army, Hlushchenko ended up in a prisoner-of-war camp in Poland, from which he escaped.

A graduate of the Academy of Art in Berlin (1924), from 1925 he worked in Paris where he immediately attracted the attention of French critics. From the New Objectivity style of his Berlin period he changed to post-Impressionism. Besides numerous French, Italian, Dutch, and (later) Ukrainian landscapes, he also painted flowers, still life, nudes, and portraits (such as of Oleksandr Dovzhenko and Volodymyr Vynnychenko, as well as portraits commissioned by the Soviet government of the French writers Henri Barbusse, Romain Rolland, and Victor Margueritte and the painter Paul Signac).

At the beginning of the 1930s, Hlushchenko belonged to the Association of Independent Ukrainian Artists and helped organize its large exhibition of Ukrainian, French, and Italian paintings at the National Museum in Lviv. Through his relationship with businessman André Mirabeau, he allegedly obtained over two hundred drawings of military equipment which he supplied to Soviet intelligence.

In 1936 Hlushchenko moved to the USSR. Working for the Soviet Union secret service, he was among those who warned the Soviet government about the German plan to attack ahead of time. In 1944, he moved to Kyiv, and created a series of paintings of the post-war city, as well as many landscapes he had seen while traveling to France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy and other countries.

In the 1960s, having come into close contact with new artistic trends on his trips abroad, he revitalized his paintings with expressive colors, and assumed a leading position among Ukrainian colorist painters. Hlushchenko's work was exhibited in Berlin (1924), Paris (five exhibits 1925–34), Milan (1927), Budapest (1930, 1932), Stockholm (1931), Rome (1933), Lviv (1934, 1935), Moscow (1943, 1959), Belgrade (1966, 1968), London (1966), Toronto (1967–9), and Kyiv (over 10 exhibits). He died in Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR. He was buried at Baikove Cemetery.

Awards Order of the Red Banner of Labour (24.11.1960) People's Artist of Ukraine (1944) People's Artist of the USSR (1976) Shevchenko National Prize (1972) — for a series of paintings "On Lenin's places abroad", "Landscapes of Ukraine" (1969–1971).