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Boychukysty By Kochman, Adrienne
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The Boychukysty were followers of the Ukrainian monumental painter Mikhajlo Lvovych Boychuk (1882–1937), who advocated a national Ukrainian artistic school drawn from Byzantine, Ukrainian mediaeval, and early Italian Renaissance sources. They included Ivan Padalka (1894–1937); Vasyl Sedlyar (1889–1937); Ivan Lypkivsky; Oksana Pavlenko (1895–1991); Antonina Ivanova; Manuil Shekhtman (1900–1941); Mykola Rokytsky (1901–1944); his wife, Sofiya A. Nalepinska (1884–1937); his brother, Tymofil Boychuk (1896–1922), and others.
Mikhajlo Boychuk was born in Romanivka, now in Ternopil Province in Western Ukraine. He studied at the Kraków Academy of Arts from 1900 to 1904, followed by several months at the Munich Academy of Arts in 1905, under the sponsorship of the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky (1865–1944). Sheptytsky, an ardent supporter of the arts in Ukraine, funded the education of numerous artists from Galicia to study in Munich and Paris. Boychuk’s education was interrupted by conscription into the Austro-Hungarian army in late 1905, where he served for one year. In early 1907, he moved to Paris to continue his studies, first at the Vitti Academy, then at the Academy Ranson, where he took classes with French Nabis painter Paul Serusier (1864–1927), a professor there. While in Paris, Boychuk met his future wife Sofiya Nalepinska, and other artists, among them Mykola Kasperovych (1885–1938), Sophie Segno (1890–1971), and Sophie Baudouin de Courtenay (1887–1967), who shared a similar passion for Byzantine and Early Renaissance art.