Krasytsky, Fotii

Krasytsky, Fotii [Krasyc’kyj, Fotij], b 24 August 1873 in Zelena Dibrova, Zvenyhorodka county, Kyiv gubernia, d 2 June 1944 in Kyiv. Painter, graphic artist, and pedagogue. Having studied with Mykola Pymonenko at the Kyiv Drawing School (1888–92), with Kyriak Kostandi at the Odesa Drawing School (1892–4) (see Odesa Art School), and with Ilia Repin at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts (1894–1901), he settled and worked in Kyiv. From 1927 to 1937 he taught at the Kyiv State Art Institute. A realist painter with an inclination towards impressionism, Krasytsky produced a series of genre paintings and landscapes with painstaking attention to ethnographic detail, including Beside the Well (1901), Guest from Zaporizhia (1901, variant 1916), Old Man, Beehives, At Dinner, Road to Kozatske Village (1899), and Kyrylivka Village (1901). His numerous portraits include Mykhailo Starytsky, Mykola Sadovsky, Lesia Ukrainka, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Ivan Franko, Taras Shevchenko, and a series devoted to Soviet writers (1933–4). He designed the stage sets for Mykola Lysenko's opera Christmas Night, performed in Kyiv in 1903. His caricatures appeared in the satirical magazine Shershen’ (1906) and in the handbook Rysuvannia i maliuvannia (Drawing and Painting, 1929).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1989).]