Honchar, Ivan

Honchar, Ivan [Гончар, Іван; Hončar], b 27 January 1911 in Lypianka, Chyhyryn county, Kyiv gubernia, d 18 June 1993 in Kyiv. Sculptor and ethnographer. He studied at the Kyiv Industrial Arts School (1927–30) and the Kyiv Institute of Agrochemistry and Soil Sciences (1931–6). In the 1930s he began sculpting; he has produced the statues of Taras Shevchenko, such as Shevchenko at the Precentor's (1939) and Young Taras Shevchenko (1950), Lesia Ukrainka, and Ustym Karmaliuk (1965), and busts of the writers Andrii Malyshko and Oles Honchar (1949). Having collected historical and ethnographic materials throughout Ukraine, in 1960 he set up in his apartment a private museum of over 3,000 items (tools, folk costumes, ceramics, icons, embroideries, Easter eggs, and old books). His collection later became the basis of the Ukrainian Center for Folk Culture «Ivan Honchar's Museum», established in 1993. Only 3 volumes of his 18 volumes of ethnographic materials have been published to date.

[This article was written in 2011.]