Palmov, Viktor

Palmov, Viktor [Пальмов, Віктор; Pal’mov], b 10 October 1888 in Samara, Russia, d 7 July 1929 in Kyiv. Painter. A graduate of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (1914), from 1925 he lived in Ukraine and taught at the Kyiv State Art Institute and belonged to the Association of Revolutionary Art of Ukraine. In 1927 he founded the left-wing Union of Contemporary Artists of Ukraine. He contributed articles on art theory to the futurist journal Nova generatsiia. In his oil paintings the subject and objects were subordinated to color and its associative effect. Inspired by folk and children’s art, they included works such as Amour (1926), For Power of the Soviets (1927), Kyiv Beach (1927), Mother (1927), Breaking the Horse (1927), Night (1928), Fisherman (1928), and May 1 (1929). In the 1930s most of his canvases were destroyed by the Stalinist authorities. A retrospective exhibition of his extant works was held at the Kyiv Museum of Ukrainian Art in 1988.

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