Capacity crowd views the Vasil Hrigorovych Krychevsky painting and archive collection at the Embassy of Ukraine in Washington, D.C.

Krychevsky Collection Being Donated to Museums In Ukraine

By E. Morgan Williams, Ukraine Market Reform Group (UMRG)
ArtUkraine.com Information Service, Washington, D.C., May 5, 2003

Washington, D.C., May 5, 2003, (ArtUkraine.com)...A capacity crowd was on hand Wednesday evening, April 30, 2003, at the Embassy of Ukraine in Washington, D.C. to view the paintings and archives of Vasyl Hryhorovych Krychevsky that are now being donated by the Vasyl H. Krychevsky family in Caracas, Venezuela, to various museums in Ukraine.

The one time viewing of the selected works "From Caracas to Ukraine" was sponsored by the Embassy of Ukraine and SigmaBleyzer.  Kostyantyn Gryshchenko, Ambassador of Ukraine to the USA opened the exhibition and welcomed the many guests to the Embassy.  Natasha Bleyzer spoke about the significant historic legacy of Vasyl H. Krychevsky (1873-1952) and his many outstanding contributions to Ukrainian art and culture as an architect, painter, illustrator, designer, scholar, and folk-art collector.

Oksana Linde de Ochoa, granddaughter of Vasyl H. Krychevsky, spoke on behalf of her artist mother, Halyna V. Krychevska Linde, and her family from Caracas, Venezuela, who are donating over 300 historic items to several museums in Ukraine. Halyna V. Krychevska Linde is only child of Vasyl H. Krychevsky and his second wife Yevhenia M. Scherbakivska Krychevska. Vasyl and Yevhenia were married in 1912 in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Oksana told about the amazing creative life of her grandfather and his long journey, one that spanned many difficult time periods, from Vorozhba, Kharkiv province, where he was born on January 12, 1873, to Poltava, to Kyiv, to Lviv, to various places in Europe, then to Paris and finally to Caracas, Venezuela, where he died on November 15, 1952.

The Vasyl H. Krychevsky collection of over 300 items being donated to museums in Ukraine includes over 50 oil and watercolor paintings, sketches of his prize winning design for the City Council Building in Poltava (1900)(now a folk-art museum), several sketches of his design for the Shevchenko Memorial Museum in Kaniv from the early 1930's, drawings for book covers, plays, movie sets, designs for textiles and tapestries, ornamental patterns, sketches for various illustrations, photographs and a variety of other historic items related to the life of Vasyl H. Krychevsky.

The Vasyl H. Krychevsky collection will be on display in the Ukrainian House in Kyiv, Ukraine on Monday, May 12th. The display will then travel to Poltava and will be on view at the new plant of the Poltava Confectionary Company, owned by the Ukrainian Growth Funds (UGF) managed by SigmaBleyzer, on Wednesday, May 14th.

The fourth and last viewing of the Krychevsky collection will be in Kharkiv, Ukraine on Friday, May 14th.  The collection will then be split up and given to a variety of museums in Ukraine including the National Gallery in Kyiv, Shevchenko Memorial Museum in Kaniv, folk-art museum in Poltava, art museum in Kharkiv, movie museum in Kyiv and the book museum at the Lavra in Kyiv.

Oksana Linde de Ochoa of Caracas contacted E. Morgan Williams, founder and editor of www.ArtUkraine.com and the ArtUkraine Information Service (ARTUIS) in the fall of 2000, about the interest of the Krychevsky family in donating a collection of historic items to museums in Ukraine.

Work was started in the spring of 2001 to gather the necessary items and documents, and find support for the project and the donation. Natasha and Michael Bleyzer of Houston, Texas, originally from Kharkiv, Ukraine, were contacted about the project and their company, SigmaBleyzer, generously became the official sponsor of the project: the four exhibitions, the physical documentation and the moving of the large collection from Caracas, to the US and now to Ukraine.