Sevruk, Halyna

Sevruk, Halyna [Севрук, Галина], b 18 May 1929 in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, d 13 February 2022 in Kyiv. Ceramist, painter, and graphic artist. After graduating from the Kyiv State Art Institute (1959) she worked for the Art Fund as a decorator of buildings; she created mosaics (The Forest Song, 1963) and large-scale ceramic panels (eg, for the Khmilnyk Sanatorium, the Chorne More Hotel in Odesa, the Kyiv Hotel in Kyiv, the Hradetskyi Hotel in Chernihiv, and School 204 in Kyiv). In 1964 she collaborated with Alla Horska and Liudmyla Semykina on a stained-glass panel designed by Opanas Zalyvakha for Kyiv University, which was later destroyed by the authorities. For speaking out against the political persecution of her friends she was expelled from the Union of Artists of Ukraine in 1968. In 1970–5 she produced several relief sculptures of Slavic pagan gods for the Cinema Building and the Kyivan Cave Historical-Cultural Preserve in Kyiv. Sevruk has won recognition for her many small ceramic reliefs depicting historical figures from Ukrainian history, mythology, folklore (such as Kozak-Mamai), and famous historical buildings. She has also done over 20 paintings (mostly in tempera) and over 30 ink drawings. A strong sympathizer of the dissident movement, Sevruk executed portraits of such dissidents as Alla Horska, Ivan Svitlychny, Nadiia Svitlychna, and Mykhailo Braichevsky. The first solo exhibition of her works was held in Kyiv in 1984, and in 1991 she had a solo exhibition in Toronto. An album of her works with a monograph by Bohdan Mysiuha was published in Kyiv in 2011.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mysiuha, Bohdan. Halyna Sevruk (Kyiv 2011)

[This article was updated in 2022.]