Volodymyr Masyk

Volodymyr Masyk was a Ukrainian painter and graphic artist whose creative style is defined by high technical skill and expressive linework.

The artist took part in over 400 exhibitions in Ukraine and nearly 100 abroad, and held more than 70 solo exhibitions. Volodymyr Masyk’s works are held in numerous art museums.

The artist was born in 1917 in the city of Katerynoslav (now Dnipro). A year later, the large Masyk family, which had thirteen children (six biological and seven adopted), moved to Konotop. There, the future artist finished a seven-year school and a trade school at the locomotive and railcar repair plant, and began working as a pattern-maker joiner.

During his years of study, he started attending the art studio at the Konotop Railway Workers' Club, where classes were led by artists O. Hofman and V. Zabolotnyi.

In 1934, Volodymyr Masyk's work In the Foundry Workshop was acquired at a studio exhibition in Chernihiv.

In 1935, he enrolled directly into the second year of the Dnipropetrovsk Art College, where he studied under the realist painter M. Panin and instructors P. Aliokhin, V. Korenev, and E. Sahaidachnyi

In 1939, the artist entered the Kharkiv Art Institute, but was conscripted into the Red Army four months later. In the summer of 1941, after completing an accelerated course at the Vladimir Infantry School, he was sent to the front. In 1942, he was severely wounded in the fighting near Orel. In 1943, Volodymyr Masyk was demobilized as a disabled war veteran.

In 1950, he graduated from the Kyiv Art Institute, where he studied under the masters of painting Mykhailo Sharonov and Karpo Trokhymenko.

After graduating from the Kyiv Art Institute, he worked for a time in the 1950s as director of the College of Decorative and Applied Arts in Kyiv, before devoting himself entirely to his creative work.

In the 1970s–1980s, he created a series of landscapes of the Kyiv region, the Baltics, Crimea, the Carpathians, and the Caucasus, executed in tempera and pastel.

The artwork of Volodymyr Masyk was presented in exhibitions held at the all-Ukrainian level (from 1954), all-Union level (from 1958), and abroad (from 1963).

The artist died in 1996 in Kyiv.

He worked in the genres of painting and graphic art, including book illustration, and produced bookplates and various print-making techniques. Among Volodymyr Masyk's original works are New House in Kosiv (1960), Moonlit Night in Trypillia (1963), and On the River Snov (1986), as well as series based on the poetry of Taras Shevchenko (1961–1963), the series Shevchenko's Places and T. H. Shevchenko and His Poetry, numerous book illustrations, and more than 120 bookplates.

UFDA digitised Kyiv. Monument to Taras Shevchenko (1976) by the artist from the collection of the Regional Communal Museum of Local History in Borshchiv.

Volodymyr Masyk’s art style developed within the current of socialist realism, marked by a deep lyrical sensibility. His creative manner is defined by high technical mastery, expressive linework, skilled command of color, and a tendency toward monumental forms combined with intimate landscapes.

He worked successfully both in oil and watercolor, as well as in complex graphic techniques — linocut, woodcut, and etching.

He created thematic paintings, book illustrations, prints, bookplates, and monumental murals, including panels for historical architectural ensembles. Part of his legacy is devoted to the Soviet era and its construction projects, though a significant portion of his body of work consists of profound landscapes, studies from life, and architectural motifs.