Description

This book is a catalog of the exhibition NIKYPHOR, which is on view at the Ukrainian Museum in New York from January 19 to April 15, 2023. It includes a foreword by the museum’s director Peter Doroshenko, an essay by the exhibition’s curator, Professor Myroslava Mudrak, a biography of the artist, Nikiforos’s works, and a list of 149 works from the museum’s collection. All of Nykyfor’s works are printed in color.
Design by Volodymyr Havrysh.
Nikifor Epiphanius Drovniak (1895-1968) was born in Krynytsia (now Poland) to a Lemko mother with serious hearing and speech impairments, and was orphaned during the First World War. In his hometown of Krynica, he was initially mocked as a freak. For most of his life, Nikifor lived in physical and emotional isolation. Art became his outlet and the main activity that gave his life meaning. Among the themes of Nikifor’s work are self-portraits and panoramas of Krynytsia with its baths and Orthodox and Catholic churches. Each image is a kaleidoscope of the familiar and the unfamiliar.