Read and translate. Say what Katerina Bilokur liked to paint most of all.
Kateryna Bilokur (1900-1961)
Katerina Bilokur is a highly original Ukrainian folk artist. Her beautiful pictures of the colorful Ukrainian nature are a significant landmark in the history of Ukrainian folk art.
Katerina Bilokur's life was not easy. She was born in the family of a poor peasant. She had no possibility to study at school and only her desire to learn helped her later to fill in the gaps in her education. Studying attentively nature, she gradually enriched herself with new impressions and penetrated into the mysteries of painting.
Her first works were amateurish. They were the portraits of people made with charcoal and self-made vegetable paints. The second half of the 1930s was an important period in her creativity. Even her earlier works – “The Birch”, “Flowers by the Fence”, “Flowers” and some others showed her creative abilities.
Vitality, harmony and sense of colours in the pictures became the main features of all her works.
Bilokur's paintings were first displayed at the Poltava Regional Exhibition in 1940 and then at the National Exhibition in Kiev. They were highly appreciated by art-lovers and art-critics.
In the 1950s Bilokur made her first attempts in water-colour painting. Her best works of that period (“Bohdanivka Village in September”, “Beyond the Village”, “Early Spring”, “Autumn”) are noted for their emotional expressiveness. During the last years of her life, which were dimmed by serious illness, Katerina Bilokur created a number of notable pictures such as “Dahlias”, “Peonies”, “Bohdanivka Apples”, “Bunch of Flowers” and others.
Katerina Bilokur died on June 9, 1961. In her native village a monument was erected in her honor. At all times of the year its pedestal is covered with flowers which she so admired.