This gallery presents selected works from the 2024 exhibition ‘A Tiger Came into the Garden: Art of Maria Prymachenko’ at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.
Maria Prymachenko worked for more than six decades in the village of Bolotnya in the Polesia region, midway between Kyiv and Chernobyl, which she never left. She survived the Holomodor, the Second World War and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster – her native village lay within the 30-kilometre Exclusion Zone – and lived to see an independent Ukraine. She was ‘discovered’ as a folk artist in 1935 and subsequently employed as an embroiderer at the Central Experimental Studio at the Museum of Ukrainian Art on the grounds of the Pechersk Lavra in Kyiv. Her works were shown at the First Republican Exhibition of Folk Art in Kyiv in 1936, followed by the 1937 World Expo in Paris and exhibitions in numerous European cities, including Warsaw, Prague and Sofia. A painter, embroiderer and ceramicist, she also illustrated children’s books and became a professional folk artist. From the 1960s, she ran an art school in Bolotnya and continued creating until the end of her life.
Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Prymachenko’s work acquired a particular resonance, not least because of its anti-war message. In 2022, the Ivankiv Historical and Local History Museum near Bolotnya was destroyed by fire, although local residents managed to save some of the artist’s paintings from the burning building. The 2024 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw formed part of the institution’s wider efforts to promote and support Ukrainian culture.
