Dmytrenko, Mykhailo

Dmytrenko, Mykhailo [Дмитренко, Михайло], b 9 November 1908 in Lokhvytsia, Poltava gubernia, d 13 March 1997 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. Portrait painter, monumentalist, graphic artist. Dmytrenko graduated from the Kyiv State Art Institute in 1930 and worked there as Fedir Krychevsky’s assistant. In 1939 he moved to Lviv and became chairman of the Organizing Committee of the Artists of Western Ukraine. In 1944–50 he lived in Munich and in 1951 immigrated to Canada. He settled eventually in Detroit. In North America Dmytrenko specialized in church painting. He painted the Orthodox Cathedral of Saint Volodymyr in Toronto, the Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception in Detroit, and Saint Constantine’s Church in Minneapolis (1975–6). He also executed the mosaics of Saint George’s Church in New York and the stained-glass windows of the Roman Catholic Church of Saint Columba in Youngstown, Ohio. He painted over 500 portraits. Among his graphic book illustrations are the illustrations in Teodosii Osmachka’s Poet and Vasyl Barka’s Bilyi svit (The White World).

In painting Dmytrenko cultivated the multicolored impressionism of the circle consisting of Fedir Krychevsky, Vasyl H. Krychevsky and Mykola Burachek. In graphic art he continued the tradition of the pure line of Heorhii Narbut’s school, and in monumental painting he showed an inclination towards the expressive forms of the Ukrainian baroque. Dmytrenko’s works appeared in numerous group and individual exhibits in Ukraine, Germany, Canada, and the United States. An issue of Terem (3 [1968]) was dedicated to Dmytrenko’s paintings.

Sviatoslav Hordynsky

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