The Artistic World of Mykola Burachek

The year 2021 draws our attention to an outstanding figure in the cultural and artistic landscape of early twentieth-century Ukraine: the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mykola Hryhorovych Burachek. During his lifetime, he was known far beyond the borders of his homeland. His works were exhibited at international exhibitions in France, Germany, Russia, and the United States, and are preserved in several museums across Ukraine. Given that only part of the artist’s rich creative legacy has survived, the Poltava Art Museum (Mykola Yaroshenko Art Gallery) takes particular pride in the fact that three works by this profoundly Ukrainian artist are held in its collection.
The personality of Mykola Hryhorovych Burachek (1871-1942) — painter, art historian, educator, writer, scenographer, and actor — is so significant and multifaceted that the events of his life could have filled several lifetimes. Like a vivid flash of lightning, he not only illuminated the artistic space of the first half of the twentieth century, but also passionately contributed to the creation of a cultural Ukraine. He took part in the founding of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts (1917) and became one of its first professors. He was a member of artistic associations, an Honored Artist of the Ukrainian SSR (1936), an Honored Worker of the Arts (1941), a professor and director (1925-1927) of the Kharkiv Art Technical School (now the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts), and the author of numerous scholarly articles and monographs.
These are merely dry biographical facts; yet when woven into the fabric of the historical period of the early twentieth century, they allow us to understand the difficult time in which Burachek’s formation as an artist, actor, organizer, educator, art historian, and scholar began.
The turbulent events of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries may be compared to a rapid ice drift that instantly shatters what only yesterday was a mirror-like river surface: the Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878), the revolutionary events of 1905 and 1917, the First World War of 1914-1918, the fall of the Russian Empire, and the formation of the USSR. These events, in one way or another, were reflected in Burachek’s fate. Destroying familiar conditions of life, they compelled him to move forward, to transform himself, to reveal his talents, and to grow professionally.
But first, let us turn to the painterly works by the artist that belong to the collection of the Poltava Art Museum.
The study Spring Landscape (1922; cardboard, oil; 21×25.3 cm) successfully conveys the state of spring nature — that force which awakens the earth from its winter sleep. We see the tender green of grass, ploughed expanses of land, and trees on the horizon: a landscape familiar to every Ukrainian. Yet in Burachek’s study, the view seems to become animated, acquiring significance, resonating in every brushstroke. The dominant colors — green, violet-blue, and ochre-pearl — form an extraordinary range of shades, a musicality of strokes, and a buoyant mood. As a recognized master of tonal values, Burachek moves us with the simplicity of composition combined with subtle transitions of color. Nature acquires weight and meaning before our eyes. The simple becomes significant. The study seems to shimmer in space, drawing the gaze, inviting reflection, urging us to feel a moment of life that Burachek not only captured but reinterpreted — revealing it as only he alone could see it.
In general, Burachek’s works, despite their small size, possess a remarkable ability to attract and hold the viewer’s attention. It is as though they are imbued with the magnetic spirit of the artist. Such an impression is created by the “velvety” study Before the Storm (1929; cardboard, oil; 13×16.5 cm), which conveys a fleeting state of nature. Before us is a moment when the wind plays in the tall field grass, bending it to the ground, while in the sky a drama unfolds — ragged clouds collide and flee from the oncoming storm. Only the house at the forest’s edge contrasts with this restless state of nature, evoking a sense of calm and embodying a refuge for a turbulent soul. Everything in this small study is harmonized: color, composition, scale, texture, and the movement of the brushstroke. Everything serves the central aim — the transmission of nature’s state. It should be noted that in the late 1920s Burachek was at the height of his creative ascent. Works of this period are characterized by an elevated mood, the “transparency” of color, and a childlike, sincere wonder before the beauty of the world.
The later work Tree (1941; cardboard, oil; 14×9 cm) has an entirely different resonance. The tree is depicted almost in backlighting, graphically, as a silhouette. The colors are mostly subdued. Only the sky shines with Neapolitan blue, hinting at the artist’s unbroken optimism. The study was painted a year before his death; Burachek was seventy years old. Behind him lay a turbulent youth, a vivid realization of himself as an actor, artist, and public figure, and a difficult life path of a strong personality. Undoubtedly, memories and reflections on life found their way into this and other works. Burachek’s emphasis on the sky is not accidental. Nor is it accidental that throughout his creative career simple rural houses appear in his studies. A boy who lost his parents early, left without support and forced to overcome the hardships of fate throughout his life, likely returned in memory to the house of his childhood, recreating it in his landscapes as a symbol of the longed-for peace that was so often absent from his restless life.
Mykola Hryhorovych Burachek was born on March 16, 1871, in the town of Letychiv in Podillia, into the family of a postal clerk, later postmaster, Hryhorii Burachek, and a housewife, Lidiia Hrodzytska. His father strongly supported his interest in drawing and painted himself, skillfully copying well-known works. Burachek’s artistic abilities were also noticed by his drawing teacher at the Kamianets gymnasium, Ivan Vaskov, who had studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts alongside Taras Shevchenko. The teacher introduced the boy to the fundamentals of drawing and instilled in him a deep love of art.
At the age of eight, Burachek lost his father; at ten, his mother. With the help of relatives, he was able to complete his studies at the Kamianets gymnasium. In 1888, he entered Kyiv University of St. Volodymyr. However, during his studies he became involved in student unrest against the autocracy, for which he was expelled and exiled to Simbirsk province. Returning to Kamianets in 1890, he joined the Kamianets-Podilskyi theatre troupe of Russian drama and for the next seventeen years closely bound his life to the theatre. He performed under the pseudonym Solomin, appearing in many cities — Ryazan, Kostroma, Minsk, Poltava, Kyiv, and Kharkiv. He worked on the same stage with well-known actors of the time — Davydov, Vera Komissarzhevskaya, Tarkhanov, Savina, Dolmatov, and Mamont-Dalsky. While touring, he met his future wife, Olha Tymofieieva, who later became an actress in the Ukrainian dramatic theatre within the troupe of the director Les Kurbas.
During his work in the theatre, Burachek created sketches for stage designs for numerous plays and productions. While working as an actor, he regularly painted studies; his passion for the visual arts never left him throughout his theatrical life. For some time, he studied at the Kyiv Drawing School under Mykola Murashko, as well as with Mykola Pymonenko and Kh. Platonov. Immersed in an artistic environment, he received advice and critique from other artists, which had a positive influence on his development. Fellow artists encouraged him to participate in exhibitions. In 1905, his landscapes were shown at an exhibition of Ukrainian artists in Lviv — an important event in the history of Ukrainian art. Its initiator, Ivan Trush, wrote: “Mykola Burachek is an exceptionally talented draftsman.”
The strongest feature of Burachek as an actor was his mastery of mime. He was regarded as one of the most gifted practitioners of expressive gesture in Russia and even taught mime drama in theatre schools both before and after the 1917 Revolution. He received favorable reviews and was predicted a brilliant acting career. However, fate took a different course. The revolutionary events of 1904–1905 approached; theatres were closing, tours were being cancelled, and Burachek was forced to terminate his contract with an impresario.
The breadth of Burachek’s talents across different artistic fields is best expressed by the saying: a talented person is talented in everything. In 1905, he left the stage and turned to literary activity. His short stories and essays, published under the pseudonym Kamientsev, appeared in leading periodicals such as Ekho (St. Petersburg) and the newspaper Kyivska dumka.
It was during this period that a decisive encounter occurred — one that profoundly changed Burachek’s life. Having fallen ill with typhus, he was treated by a Kyiv physician, Stanislavskyi, in whose home the doctor’s brother happened to be staying — the Polish landscape painter Jan Stanisławski. After viewing Burachek’s studies, the artist persuaded him to enroll in the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts, where he headed the landscape studio.
At the end of the nineteenth century, the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts was still in the process of formation. Established in 1897 on the basis of the Kraków School of Fine Arts, it was closely associated with the name of the great Polish painter Jan Matejko. The Academy’s primary aim was to educate artists capable of expressing national interests through visual means. This position attracted progressive artistic youth, both Polish and Ukrainian. Thus, at that time, the Kraków Academy became one of the centers for the formation of Ukrainian art, educating such masters as Ivan Trush, Mykhailo Zhuk, Mykola Burachek, Oleksa Novakivskyi, and others.
Like many gifted individuals, Burachek seemed to be guided by fate itself. In 1910, he graduated as the Academy’s top student. In order to further refine his talent, he traveled to Paris — the artistic capital of the early twentieth century. The most fashionable artistic movements of the time — Fauvism, Cubism, Impressionism — did not leave him indifferent.
For a short time, he worked in the Paris studio of the renowned Fauvist Henri Matisse. However, the bold decorative compositions of this artist had little influence on Burachek’s delicate painterly manner. The Académie Ranson, where he also studied under Maurice Denis and Sérusier, directed his attention toward Impressionists, Pointillists, and Purists. Yet these styles did not fully satisfy him; he sought immediacy and truth. He found it among the Barbizon painters — Corot, Diaz, Harpignies — and among the Impressionists of the 1870s. Impressionist influence can be traced in many of Burachek’s works like a subtle trail of fine perfume, yet his art does not fully correspond to the fundamental principles of Impressionism in terms of composition, color, or imagery. His works lack the cold blue-violet palette characteristic of later Impressionist followers, and his compositions do not create an impression of randomness.
Burachek spent two years in Paris. Filled with refined impressions and creative fervor, the talented and energetic artist returned to Kyiv in 1912. Thus ended his period of study and began his fruitful work within Ukrainian art.
In Kyiv, Burachek immediately entered the circle of leading Ukrainian artists and soon established himself as a powerful painter. The Second Exhibition of Kyiv Artists in 1913, where twenty of his works were shown, confirmed his artistic stature.
Thereafter, Burachek became actively involved in public and cultural work. In 1914, he participated in the creation of a Salon of permanent exhibitions of Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, and Western European artists.
With the opening of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts in 1917, Burachek began his pedagogical activity. He was one of its founders and one of its first professors, heading the landscape painting class. This period marked a creative rise: he painted numerous studies, choosing motifs that seemed, at first glance, entirely unremarkable. His studies are poetic, luminous, shimmering, and noble in their color range. They often possess independent artistic value. It is in these studies that his painterly talent is most vividly expressed. As a skilled colorist, he perceived color with great subtlety, masterfully working with half-tones. He almost always painted on simple cardboard, often leaving works unfinished, and sometimes even painting on both sides of the same sheet. His landscapes of this period are full of freshness and lyricism; modest in subject, yet harmonious in color, they establish him as an artist of refined painterly sensitivity.
During his Kyiv period, Burachek also worked in theatrical design, creating stage sets for plays by Oleksandr Oles (On the Way to a Fairy Tale, 1918), Leo Tolstoy (The Power of Darkness), Alexander Ostrovsky (The Forest), Gerhart Hauptmann (The Sunken Bell), and a production based on the poetry of Taras Shevchenko (The Drowned Maiden, 1919). He continued to work as a theatre artist even later, designing productions for the Kharkiv theatre “Berezil” and maintaining close ties with actors, while also teaching in theatre institutes.
In 1925, Burachek was appointed director of the Kharkiv Art Technical School. He led the workshop of theatrical and decorative painting and taught easel painting. As a teacher, he was sensitive and attentive, always finding an individual approach to his students and taking them outdoors for studies. He was deeply respected by them.
Later, Burachek stepped down from the position of director due to lack of time, but remained a professor until the Second World War, and from 1932 at the Kharkiv Art Institute.
This was a period when he stood at the center of the country’s cultural life. From 1926 to 1929, he chaired the Central Bureau of Art Workers in Kharkiv, was one of the founders of the Association of Revolutionary Art of Ukraine, a member of the Association of Contemporary Artists of Ukraine, an exhibitor of the Association of Artists of Red Ukraine, a member of the Shevchenko Committee, and a member of the Committee for the Protection of Cultural Monuments. He participated in organizing museum collections, including that of Taras Shevchenko, as well as memorial museums of Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi in Chernihiv and Vinnytsia, and delivered numerous lectures and publications. Despite his heavy workload, he remained one of the most active participants in Ukrainian art exhibitions.
In 1931, Burachek became a research fellow at the Shevchenko Picture Gallery in Kharkiv. He made an invaluable contribution to the study of Shevchenko as an artist, discovering and attributing hundreds of previously unknown works and compiling the first comprehensive catalogue of his artistic legacy. His book The Great National Artist (1939) presented seventy-five reproductions of Shevchenko’s works and laid the foundation for scholarly methodology in this field.
On March 25, 1941, a major retrospective exhibition of 400 paintings was organized in Kharkiv to mark his seventieth anniversary. It became a summation of his creative path. However, with the outbreak of war, many works were lost during transport.
During the war, Burachek refused evacuation and died in Kharkiv on August 12, 1942.
Burachek’s character combined dignity, intellect, culture, erudition, artistic taste, vision, and both theatrical and literary talent. These qualities, shaped by life experience, allowed him to remain true to himself, independent of fashionable artistic trends, and to develop his own distinctive style. He remains in Ukrainian art history as a realist landscape painter. As he once wrote with a touch of irony: “I was often called an Impressionist, but I am merely a plein-air painter…” [12]
Burachek’s dynamic life — as a teacher, public figure, writer, and researcher of Ukrainian art grounded in true scholarly principles — stands as an example of the resilience of a creative personality and of dedicated work in the development of one’s talents. His legacy is not only his contribution to theatre, nor only his artistic, literary, or scholarly works. For us today, Burachek’s legacy lies in his very life path — one he walked with dignity, remaining, above all, a Human being.

References:
1. Burachek, Mykola H. M. H. Burachek. Kyiv: Derzhavne vydavnytstvo “Mystetstvo,” 1937.
2. Diuzenko, Yu. Mykola Burachek. Kyiv: Mystetstvo, 1967.
3. Melnyk, A. Impressionism and Ukraine. Kyiv: PF “Halereia,” 2011.
4. Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. Dictionary of Artists of Ukraine. Kyiv: Holovna redaktsiia Ukrainskoi Radianskoi entsyklopedii, 1973.
5. Ukrainian Painting of the 20th–21st Centuries: Album. Khmelnytskyi: Halereia; Kyiv: Artaniia Nova, 2006.
6. Khanko, V. Encyclopedia of the Art of Poltava Region. Vol. 1. Poltava: ASMI, 2015.
7. Kudrytskyi, A. V. Artists of Ukraine: Encyclopedic Handbook. Kyiv: Ukrainska entsyklopediia im. M. P. Bazhana, 1992.
8. Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts. “Burachek Mykola Hryhorovych.” Accessed February 6, 2021.
9. Museum of Ukrainian Painting. “Burachek Nikolai Grigoryevich.” Accessed February 6, 2021.
10. Ablijtsov, V. “Mykola Burachek – Founder of Artistic Shevchenkiana.” Accessed February 6, 2021.
11. Bilokin, S. “The Origins of the Ukrainian State Academy of Arts.” Accessed February 17, 2021.
12. Burachek, Mykola H. “The Secret of Creativity.” Fine Arts, no. 3 (1941): 12–13.
13. M. Burachek. Gallery of Arts, no. 1–2 (83–84). Kyiv: Hapei A. N., 2019.