Vitold Manastyrskyi

Vitold Manastyrskyi was an outstanding Ukrainian painter, graphic artist, and teacher.

The artist combined active creative work with public and educational activities. The artwork of Vitold Manastyrskyi was repeatedly exhibited at numerous regional, interregional, zonal, republican, all-Union, and international exhibitions.

The artist was born in 1915 in Lviv into the family of the artist Antin Manastyrskyi. His father became Vitold’s first teacher, nurturing his passion for painting from early childhood.

Vitold received his initial art education at the Lviv Art School (1929–1934). In 1935, he was admitted directly to the second year of the Warsaw Academy of Arts. There, he studied under the tutelage of masters such as Tadeusz Pruszkowski and Felicjan Kowarski. While still a student, he made his debut in an academic exhibition, where several of his early works garnered significant critical acclaim.

In 1937, for his painting “Rest on the Grass”, the young artist won his first award and earned the opportunity to travel to Paris for free to attend the international exhibition “Industry and Art”.

In 1939, Vitold Manastyrskyi successfully graduated from the Academy and returned to Lviv. Soon after, he became a member of the Union of Artists of Ukraine, fruitfully combining his creative work with teaching activities.

Between 1939 and 1948, Manastyrskyi taught drawing and painting at the Lviv Art and Industrial School. Upon the founding of the Lviv Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts in 1947, he joined the faculty as a lecturer in the Department of Drawing. Over the following decades, he rose through the academic ranks to become an Associate Professor and, ultimately, a Professor. From 1974, he served as the Chair of the Department of Painting. In recognition of his contributions to the arts, he was named an Honored Artist of the Ukrainian SSR in 1975.

The artist passed away in 1992 and is buried in Lviv. Many of Manastyrskyi’s paintings are exhibited in museums and art galleries across Ukraine.

In his works, he celebrates the beauty of his native Carpathian region, the life of its people, and portrays images of his contemporaries and working people: laborers, peasants, and figures from science and culture. Among Vitold Manastyrskyi’s original paintings are “Hutsul Folk Music Circle” (1951), “Young Man” (1949), “Verkhovynka” (1960), “Landscape from Kryvorivnia” (1956), “Valley of the Bila Tysa” (1961), “Spring on the Outskirts of Lviv” (1962), “Hutsul Still Life” (1957), “Artist’s Studio” (1956), and others.

The UFDA digitized the landscape “View of the Village of Korostiv” (1986) from the Borshchiv Regional Municipal Museum of Local History's collection. This work is now available to a wide audience in the highest resolution on the fund’s website.

While primarily a realist, Manastyrskyi’s art style was shaped by his studies in Poland, where he integrated specific Post-Impressionist techniques into his work. Most notably, he adopted the use of small, discrete strokes of pure color applied over a white ground, often utilizing a small, round sable brush. He continued to employ this method, with varying intensity, well into the 1960s. A versatile master, the artist was equally prolific across genre painting, portraiture, landscapes, and still lifes.