Kushnir, Mykhailo

Kushnir, Mykhailo [Кушнір, Михайло; Kušnir, Myxajlo], b 23 August 1897 in Stanyslaviv, Galicia, d 8 May 1988 in New York, New York State. Painter and art critic; a publicist and community leader. Having served as a captain in the Ukrainian Galician Army (1918–19), he studied art at the Vienna Academy of Arts (1919–20) and philosophy at Lviv University and Heidelberg University (PH D 1950). A member of the Ukrainian Military Organization and then of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, he organized Prosvita branches and theater groups in the Stanyslaviv region and Lviv. In 1941–5 he headed the department of culture of the Ukrainian Central Committee and belonged to the Military Board of the Division Galizien. Immigrating to the United States of America in 1951, he was active in the Ukrainian Youth Association and the Organization for the Defense of Four Freedoms for Ukraine, and was president of the Association for the Advancement of Ukrainian Culture (1965–70). His publications include four albums of woodcuts (1927, 1931, 1935, 1956); monographs on art theory such as Der Sinn im Gegenstand (1929), Das Problem der Stilenwicklung in der modernen Kunst (1950), and Velych mystetstva i vidrodzhennia kul'tury (The Greatness of Art and the Revival of Culture, 1968); and numerous articles on philosophical, artistic, educational, and political questions in the Ukrainian press. He was a proponent of Christian nationalism.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]