Chumak

Chumak belongs to a series of folklore-themed gouache paintings. The work was first exhibited at the Ukrainian Plastics Exhibition, organized in Lviv in the fall of 1931 by the Association of Independent Ukrainian Artists (ANUM). Art critics have noted this work for its "colorful freshness" and "expressiveness of composition." Chumak is one of the cross-cutting themes of M. Butovych's work, because a mythical and at the same time a real-life image of the Chumak goes back to the artist's childhood, personifying Gogol’s mystical hero, the wandering Cossack character. The work from the collection of the NLM is one of the first presentations of this topic.

Maria Cymbalista 
Head of Prints and Drawings department
From the collection of Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum in Lviv.