The article presents the life and work of an outstanding Ukrainian artist Vasyl Sedliar. Sedliar was one of the most eminent representatives of the Kiev school of Mykhailo Boychuk – the most famous circle of the Ukrainian artistic avant-garde between 1910 and 1920. Sedliar’s work, like the works of other boychukists, was an original and fruitful attempt of combining, on the one hand, the experience of the Western avant-garde with elements of the Ukrainian folk art and the neoprimitive; and on the other hand, noble traditions of religious art of the Byzantine Empire and early Renaissance, the Ukrainian school of icon painting. The series of illustrations drawn for Kobzar created by Sedliar over the period 1920–1930 represents the height of his graphic abilities. The issues of Kobzar with Sedliar’s illustrations survived the destruction in the hearth of the Stalinist inquisition and became an integral part of the Ukrainian and global culture in the twentieth century.
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