Lebedyn

Vira Yurchenko was a Ukrainian artist, graphic artist, and decorator.

The artwork of Vira Yurchenko comprises more than 300 paintings and graphic works. Her pieces have been exhibited in Ukraine and abroad. The crowning jewel of her creative legacy is her graphic Shevchenkiana.

The artist was born in 1922 in the city of Grozny (now part of Russia). In 1944 she completed her studies at the decorative and theatrical faculty of the Baku Art College under the tutelage of Mikayil Abdullayev.

She went on to study easel graphics at the Kharkiv Art Institute under M. Derehus, V. Myronenko, Y. Daits, and M. Fradkin, after which she was assigned to work in Lviv.

At the invitation of the director of the Sumy Art Museum she relocated to Sumy, where she worked as a research fellow at the museum (1952–1955) and subsequently as a set designer at the music and drama theatre.

Vira Yurchenko’s paintings and graphic works were featured in republican and regional art exhibitions from 1952. 

In the early 1950s, she was among the founders of the Society of Sumy Artists, which later formed the basis of the regional organisation of the Union of Artists of Ukraine. She taught graphics at the fine arts studio of the regional House of Folk Art.

During the 1970s and 1980s she was an active participant in the work of the Sumy Club of Exlibris Artists and Graphics Enthusiasts.

The artist died in 1991, leaving behind a body of work of more than 300 pieces. Her works are held in the Sumy Regional Art Museum named after Nikanor Onatskyy, the National Museum of Taras Shevchenko in Kyiv, the Shevchenko National Reserve in Kaniv, private collections in Italy, Poland, and Germany, and the Pierre Robert Gallery in Luxembourg.

The artist worked in the techniques of etching, autolithography, linocut, pastel, and watercolour.

Among Vira Yurchenko’s original works are Illiinska Square. Romny, Shevchenko's Oak in the Village of Andriivka, The Khrushchov Estate, Landscape. Lyfyn, The Zalesky Family House, Hyrivka, A House in Krolevets, and many others.

A particular place in the artist's work was held by the theme of Taras Shevchenko, which accompanied her throughout her life. During the 1950s and 1960s a graphic series connected with the Kobzar's time in the Sumy region began to appear in her body of work. While working on it, she travelled to sites associated with Shevchenko, studying everything related to his artistic and poetic output and to his personality: archives, literature, and the recollections of local Sumy historians. All of these indelible impressions, and all of her accumulated research, found expression in the masterfully executed graphic sheets of the Sumy Shevchenkiana.

UFDA digitised five works by the artist from the collection of the Regional Communal Museum of Local History in Borshchiv, including Lyfyne (1954), Lebedyn (1954), Shevchenkove Village (1954), and others.