Lisovsky, Robert

Lisovsky, Robert [Лісовський, Роберт; Lisovs’kyj], b 29 December 1893 in Oleksandrivske (now Zaporizhia), d 28 December 1982 in Geneva, Switzerland. Painter and graphic artist; husband of Stefaniia Turkevych-Lukiianovych and father of Zoia Lisovska. He studied in Kyiv at Oleksander Murashko's art school, under Mykhailo Boichuk and Heorhii Narbut at the Ukrainian State Academy of Arts (1917–20), and at the Berlin Academy of Arts (1927). An émigré from 1920, he worked as a graphic artist in Lviv and was a professor of graphic art at the Ukrainian Studio of Plastic Arts in Prague (1929–45). After the Second World War he lived in London and, from 1962, Geneva.

Lisovsky exhibited in Kyiv, Lviv, Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, and Rome. He was a masterful book illustrator and designer, whose expressionism incorporated traits of the Kyivan baroque in an original and modern fashion. Lisovsky, Pavlo Kovzhun, and Mykola Butovych were the three most eminent Ukrainian book artists of the 1920s and 1930s. Lisovsky also designed the trident with a sword, bookplates, Olha Basarab's tombstone (1924) in Lviv, and painted in watercolors and oils (flowers, landscapes, still lifes, and portraits). Among his best known designs are the trademark of the German Lufthansa airlines and the emblem of the Plast Ukrainian Youth Association.

[This article was updated in 2013.]