Burachek, Mykola

Burachek, Mykola [Бурачек, Микола; Buraček], b 16 March 1871 in Letychiv, Podilia gubernia, d 12 August 1942 in Kharkiv. Impressionist painter and pedagogue. Burachek studied in Kyiv and graduated from the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts in 1910 (class of Jan Stanisławski). His first exhibit was held in 1907. In 1910–12 he worked in the studio of H. Matisse in Paris. In 1917–22 he served as professor at the Ukrainian State Academy of Arts in Kyiv and then at the Kyiv State Art Institute and the Lysenko Music and Drama Institute in Kyiv. From 1925 to 1934 he was rector of the Kharkiv Art Institute and then returned to the Kyiv State Art Institute.

A master landscape painter, he rendered Ukrainian landscapes in a colorful, impressionist style in such works as Morning on the Dnieper (1934), Apple Trees in Bloom (1936), and The Mighty Dnieper Roars and Bellows (1941). He also designed stage sets: in 1934 for the plays Marusia Churai by Ivan Mykytenko and Dai sertsiu voliu ... (Set Your Heart Free ...) by Marko Kropyvnytsky, which were staged in Kharkiv theaters, and in 1937 for plays staged in Donetsk theaters. As an art scholar, Burachek made a significant contribution to the study of Taras Shevchenko as an artist and wrote a monograph about his art Velykyi narodnyi khudozhnyk (A Great National Artist, 1939). He also wrote Moie zhyttia (My Life, 1937) and numerous articles about Oleksander Murashko, Serhii Vasylkivsky, Mykhailo Zhuk, Mykola Samokysh, and other artists. He played an important role in the process of establishing literary memorial museums of Taras Shevchenko in Kharkiv and Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky in Vinnytsia and Chernihiv. A book about Burachek by Yu. Diuzhenko was published in Kyiv in 1967.

Marko Robert Stech

[This article was updated in 2010.]