Maria Prymachenko

Prymachenko was born to a peasant family and spent the majority of her life in the village. She attended school for four years, before contracting polio, leaving her with a physical impairment, which impacted her life. She described her first artistic experiments in later life: "Once, as a young girl, I was tending a gaggle of geese. When I got with them to a sandy beach, on the bank of the river, after crossing a field dotted with wild flowers, I began to draw real and imaginary flowers with a stick on the sand… Later, I decided to paint the walls of my house using natural pigments. After that I've never stopped drawing and painting."

During childhood, Prymachenko's mother taught her embroidery. Her talent was recognised by the artist Tetiana Floru, who invited Prymachenko to work at the Central Experimental Workshop of the Kyiv Museum of Ukrainian Art in 1935. In Kyiv, Prymachenko underwent two operations, which enabled her to stand unaided. Also, she met her partner, Vasyl Marynchuk, there. In March 1941, their son was born. She and Marynchuk did not have time to get married before he went to war; he did not return. She returned to Ivankiv and worked on a collective farm.

Prymachenko's works were inspired by Ukrainian, and in particular Polesian, folk traditions. They include references to the natural world and to fairy-tales.During the 1930s, she made a transition from embroidery to painting, and her works from this period are painted onto white backgrounds. Her bold and expressive linework was developing and she was combining traditional Ukrainian motifs in new ways. During the 1960s to 1980s, her style continued to develop, with paintings having an increasingly vibrant colour palette and a new choice of bright backgrounds for her works. At this time she moved from working in watercolour to working in gouache. In the 1970s, Prymachenko also began to include short phrases or proverbs on the reverse of her canvases, which related to the topic of the work.