Nalepinska, Sofiia

Nalepinska, Sofiia [Налепінська, Софія; Nalepins’ka] (Nalepińska, Zofia) b 30 July 1884 in Łódź, Poland, d 11 December 1937 in Kyiv. Graphic artist and xylographer of Polish origin; wife of Mykhailo Boichuk (from 1917) and sister of the Polish poet Tadeusz Nalepiński. She studied at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts, in Munich (1906–7), and in Paris (1909–11), where she first met Boichuk. She taught at the Myrhorod Art and Ceramics Tekhnikum (1918–21) and the Kyiv Art and Industrial Tekhnikum (1921–2) and then headed the xylographic workshop at the Kyiv Institute of Plastic Arts (1922–4), taught at the Kyiv State Art Institute (1924–35), and belonged to the Association of Revolutionary Art of Ukraine (1925–31). Nalepinska created many xylographs, which were used as book illustrations, covers, and posters. Her approach was influenced by Ukrainian folk art, icons, 17th- and 18th-century engraving, Heorhii Narbut, and formalist theory, and in turn, she influenced Ivan Padalka and Olena Sakhnovska. In 1928–32 her works were exhibited in over 35 group shows of Soviet art. She was arrested by the Soviet secret police in June 1937 and later executed. She was posthumously ‘rehabilitated’ in 1958.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]