Bokshai, Yosyp

Bokshai, Yosyp [Бокшай, Йосип; Bokšaj, Josyp], b 2 October 1891 in the village of Kobyletska Poliana in Transcarpathia, d 19 October 1975 in Uzhhorod. Realist painter with an inclination towards impressionism, pedagogue, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Arts from 1958. Bokshai graduated in 1914 from the Budapest Institute of Visual Arts. In 1918 he began teaching at the Uzhhorod gymnasium. In 1927 he helped organize the Public School of Art and, in 1931, the Society of Contributors to the Fine Arts in Transcarpathian Ruthenia. In 1951–7 he lectured at the Lviv Institute of Applied and Decorative Art, and in 1958–72 he worked at the Uzhhorod Regional Museum (see Transcarpathian Regional Studies Museum).

Among Bokshai's works are monumental paintings on the walls of many Transcarpathian churches, particularly the iconostasis in the church of the Máriapócs Monastery and the Elevation of the Cross in the Uzhhorod cathedral; portraits (Self-portrait, 1929); and landscapes and genre paintings, such as Market in Uzhhorod (1927), Winter (1927), Khust Castle (1942), Polonyna Rivna (1946), Bokorashi (Loggers, 1947), Uzhhorod Castle (1947), Meeting on the Mountain Meadow, (1957), and The Synevyr Lake (1967). Bokshai's paintings are preserved in the museums of Ukraine, and about 50 are found in the United States: in the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York, in the Museum of Slavic Heritage in Pittsburgh, and in private collections.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Personal’na vystavka tvoriv zasluzhenoho diiacha mystetstv URSR Io. Io. Bokshaia: Kataloh (Uzhhorod 1954)
Ostrovskii, Grigorii. Iosif Iosifovich Bokshai (Moscow 1967)

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