Terletsky, Liubomyr

Terletsky, Liubomyr [Терлецький, Любомир; Terlec'kyj, Ljubomyr], b 16 May 1922 in Skoviatyn, Borshchiv county, Galicia, d 25 September 1993 in Lviv. Sculptor and medallionist. After serving a 10-year sentence in the GULAG concentration camps for ‘Ukrainian nationalism,’ he returned to Lviv in 1957 and graduated from the Lviv Institute of Applied and Decorative Art in 1966. Terletsky's sculptures and medallions are marked by vivid individual specificity, and combine classical tradition with elements of schematization and improvisation. In the 1960s, by choosing the chief designer of the Soviet space travel, Serhii Korolov, as a subject of his sculptures and representing him and his rockets as distinctly Ukrainian Kyivan warriors waiting to be launched, Terletsky ran afoul of his Soviet art mentors, and his work was removed from the Lviv Museum of Ukrainian Art. Only after executing ‘patriotic’ sculptures and medallions (‘Soldier with Child,’ ‘The Great War for the Fatherland’) was Terletsky again permitted to accept commissions for his sculptures. In the mid-1980s he became incapacitated by a serious chronic illness. His sculptures were readmitted to the Lviv Museum of Ukrainian Art only after the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]