Balavensky, Fedir

Balavensky, Fedir [Балавенсъкий, Федір; Balavens'kyj], b 31 December 1864 in Liubotyn near Kharkiv, d 8 November 1943 in the village of Lianozovo, Moscow oblast. Sculptor and pedagogue. He graduated from the Kyiv Drawing School in 1896 and the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts in 1903. Balavensky lectured at the Kyiv Art School (1907–20) and at the Ceramic Technical School in Myrhorod (1922–30). Among his works are busts of Taras Shevchenko, Mykola Lysenko, Ivan Kotliarevsky, and Panteleimon Kulish; the Shevchenko monuments in Kyiv (which won second prize in a 1911 international contest and was demolished by Anton Denikin's troops in 1919), Lubny, Zolotonosha, and Myrhorod (1924–6); and the bronze gravestone bust of Marko Kropyvnytsky in Kharkiv (1914). In Kyiv Balavensky executed a number of allegorical statues on the Red Cross building (1913), co-sculpted the bas-relief Triumph of Phryne on the Iserlis building (1909), and designed the hippodrome (1916). In his sculptures Balavensky combined classicism with Ukrainian folk elements. A study of Balavensky by H. Bohdanovych was published in Kyiv in 1963.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]