1900–1961
Kateryna Bilokur
Master of folk painting
She was turned away from a college because she had no school certificate. In 1954 her paintings were shown in Paris. Kateryna Bilokur, a self-taught villager from Bohdanivka, created her own style of decorative flower painting.
Key accomplishments
- Created a recognizable style of decorative flower painting without formal training
- Work shown at an international exhibition in Paris (1954)
- People’s Artist of the Ukrainian SSR (1956)
Why wouldn’t they let her study?
Kateryna Bilokur was born in 1900 in the village of Bohdanivka (then in Poltava Governorate, now Kyiv Oblast) and lived there all her life. Her parents didn’t want her to paint. In the early 1920s she set off for the Myrhorod College of Ceramic Art with two of her drawings, but she was turned away because she had no school certificate. She walked all the way home.
So she taught herself, from nature. She made her first drawings with charcoal on a scrap of homespun linen, and she mixed her paints from beetroot, elderberry, viburnum, onion and herbs.
The letter that changed everything
In the spring of 1940 Bilokur heard the singer Oksana Petrusenko on the radio and wrote her a letter. The letter reached specialists, and that same year Bilokur’s paintings were shown in Poltava, then in Kyiv in 1941.
In 1954 three of her canvases, among them “Tsar Kolos”, were shown at an international exhibition in Paris. According to the Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine, Pablo Picasso praised them highly, though his words about her are reported in different ways. Two of those paintings never came back to Ukraine. In 1956 Bilokur was named People’s Artist of the Ukrainian SSR.
Why her flowers are still recognized
Bilokur proved that real art can be born anywhere: in a village, without art training, through talent and persistence. Her flowers combine precise observation with the decorative spirit of folk art. And the house in Bohdanivka where she lived has been a museum since 1977.
