Lukomsky, Georgii

Lukomsky, Georgii or Loukomski, Georges [Лукомский, Георгий; Lukomskij, Georgij], b 16 March 1884 in Kaluga, Russia, d 25 March 1952 in Nice, France. Russian architect, architectural and art historian, and painter. He studied at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts and in Paris and Rome and was curator of the Russian imperial palace in Tsarskoe Selo. He researched and painted, drew, or photographed many architectural monuments in the Russian Empire, Austrian Empire, France, and Italy. In 1919 he was curator of the Khanenko Art Museum in Kyiv (now Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum of Arts) and worked with Mykola Biliashivsky and Mykola O. Makarenko on the restoration of the Saint Sophia Cathedral. Around 1920 he fled Bolshevik rule and lived as an émigré in Berlin and Paris. During the Second World War he lived in London. His many works on Russian, Ukrainian, French, and Italian architecture and art include books in Russian on the buildings of the Rozumovsky family in Chernihiv gubernia (1911), the ancient Rus’ architecture of Chernihiv (1912), the history of the destruction and restoration of the Baturyn Palace (1912), the architecture of 12th- to 18th-century Galicia (1915, containing his own illustrations), and old estates in Kharkiv gubernia (1917). As an émigré he published books in Russian on his friend Heorhii Narbut (1923), Kyiv’s ancient architecture and the Ukrainian baroque (1923), Kyiv’s church architecture (1923, containing his own photographs; German translation 1923; French translation 1929), and the Khanenko Museum (1925).

Sviatoslav Hordynsky

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