Lasovsky, Volodymyr

Lasovsky, Volodymyr [Ласовський, Володимир; Lasovs'kyj], b 3 July 1907 in Soroky, Buchach county, Galicia, d 11 November 1975 in New York. Painter and art essayist and theoretician. He studied at the Novakivsky Art School in Lviv (1928–33) and F. Léger’s Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris (1934) and was a key member of RUB and the Association of Independent Ukrainian Artists in Lviv. A postwar émigré in Austria and Paris, he lived in Argentina from 1948 and moved to New York in 1959. Lasovsky painted portraits in a classical manner and Légeresque semiabstract compositions with geometric figures. In Buenos Aires he taught art history at a Ukrainian theater studio, and in New York he headed the branch of the Ukrainian Artists' Association in the USA, directed Ukrainian plays, and was chairman of the Council on Cultural Affairs of the World Congress of Free Ukrainians. A book about him was published in 1980 in Toronto.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]