Kateryna Bilokur, the Painter Who Made Her Own Brushes and Paints

Her first pictures were drawn in charcoal — not on paper, but on scraps of homespun cloth. She made her own brushes by bundling animal bristles, and made her own paints from beets, elderberry, kalyna (a kind of viburnum), onions and various plants. That is how the Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine (ESU), compiled by the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the Shevchenko Scientific Society, describes the beginnings of the painter Kateryna Bilokur (Катерина Білокур).

A farmer’s daughter who never attended school, she taught herself to read, write and paint, and became a painter known for her flower pictures while spending nearly all of her 60 years in the village where she was born.

Sixty Years in the Village of Bohdanivka

Bilokur was born on 7 December 1900 into a farming family in the village of Bohdanivka. The Great Ukrainian Encyclopedia (VUE), the country’s national encyclopedia, places the village in “what is now Boryspil Raion, Kyiv Oblast.” ESU, published in 2003, uses the pre-reform raion name, “Yahotyn Raion.” ESU gives the date of birth as two dates, “25 November (7 December) 1900” — the first under the Julian calendar then used in the Russian Empire, the second under the modern calendar (on the reorganization of raions, see the article on oblasts, raions and hromadas).

According to VUE, she taught herself to read and write and began drawing as a young child. At first she drew in charcoal on scraps of old shirts, later on canvas, and she taught herself how to prime a canvas and how to make brushes and paints. The Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance (UINP), in an article published with the state news agency Ukrinform in December 2025, explains that she tried to enter a theatrical trade school in Kyiv and an arts-and-ceramics trade school in Myrhorod, but was turned away because she had no certificate of primary education.

She died in 1961, in the same village of Bohdanivka. The date differs by one day between sources: the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (published by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, CIUS, at the University of Alberta; hereafter IEU) and VUE give 10 June, while ESU gives 9 June. In 1956 she received the title “People’s Artist of the Ukrainian SSR” (VUE, ESU).

A Letter to a Singer

According to ESU, Bilokur was almost unknown until 1939. What changed this was a letter she wrote to the singer Oksana Petrusenko. This led a staff member of the Poltava Oblast House of Folk Art to take an interest in her paintings, and an exhibition of her work was held in Poltava in 1940, followed by one in Kyiv in 1941. Her first solo exhibition was also held in Poltava, in that same year, 1941.

According to UINP’s account, Bilokur heard Petrusenko singing on the radio in 1940 and sent her paintings, and Petrusenko showed them to the poet Pavlo Tychyna and the painter Vasyl Kasiian. On the year of her first solo exhibition, the sources again differ: UINP gives 1940, ESU gives 1941.

Also according to UINP, in 1941, during the Second World War, a museum in Kyiv burned down and the early works displayed there were lost. The number lost is put at about 11, and some sources say as many as 25. She herself reportedly considered the burned paintings her best work.

More Than 100 Kinds of Flowers

According to VUE, Bilokur painted still lifes, landscapes, portraits and self-portraits (1950, 1955, 1957). She reportedly made no preliminary sketches or studies, and even on a large canvas would begin with the smallest detail.

The flowers she painted — sunflowers, dahlias, roses, peonies, cornflowers and more — number over 100 by name (VUE). She often placed flowers from different seasons together in a single picture, and combined them with fruit and vegetables; VUE cites Tsar-Kolos (“King of the Ears of Grain”) as a painting in which the flowers are arranged as if circling the sunflower, a symbol of the sun. ESU explains that this “departure from nature” — showing a plant in bloom and bearing fruit at the same time — was not just a compositional device but a way of expressing ideas about nature and human existence.

The encyclopedias list her major works as follows. The years are as given in the encyclopedias; the English titles in the second column are translations made for this article.

Bilokur was also a letter-writer. ESU values her letters to the art historian Stefan Taranushenko, the poet Tychyna and various painters both as a record of her artistic development and inner creative life, and as literature. According to UINP, 78 letters to Taranushenko survive.

Paris, 1954, and the “Words of Picasso”

According to ESU, in 1954 three of her paintings — Tsar-Kolos, Berizka and Kolhospne pole — were shown at an international exhibition in Paris. The first two of these never returned to Ukraine, and their whereabouts are unknown.

Both ESU (2003) and IEU (updated 2015) write that Pablo Picasso greatly admired the paintings at this exhibition. UINP, in its December 2025 article, quotes Picasso as having said, “If we had a painter of this calibre, we would have made the whole world talk about her.”

None of these sources, however, state when, where or to whom Picasso is supposed to have said this. No primary source — such as Picasso’s own writing or contemporary French newspaper records — could be found to confirm the quotation. It is safest to read it as a widely repeated assessment rather than a verified statement.

In the same article, UINP also notes that the Soviet Union used Bilokur as a propaganda example of “a happy kolkhoz painter risen from the people.” According to UINP, however, neither her parents nor Bilokur herself ever belonged to a kolkhoz (collective farm). UINP also cites the testimony of the physician Yevhen Toustukha, who said she refused a village official’s request to paint a portrait of Stalin.

Museums That Hold Her Work

According to VUE, most of her works are held at the Poltava Art Museum (named after Yaroshenko), the National Museum of Ukrainian Folk Decorative Art in Kyiv, and the Yahotyn Museum of History (more than 70 works). ESU writes that the National Museum of Ukrainian Folk Decorative Art has a large gallery called the “Bilokur Room.” IEU also names this museum among the places holding her work.

In 1977, a memorial museum opened in the village of Bohdanivka in the house where Bilokur lived from 1909 until her death. It is a branch of the Yahotyn Museum of History, and preserves her furniture, paintings, book collection, paints, brushes and easels, among other things (ESU, VUE). In 1989 the Kateryna Bilokur Prize was established for folk-art makers (VUE).

Another self-taught painter who, likewise from a village in Kyiv Oblast, went on painting imaginary animals and flowers, was Maria Prymachenko (1909–1997) (see the article on Prymachenko).

2022: Near the Fighting Once Again

According to UINP, in 2022, when Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, the Yahotyn Museum of History — the largest repository of her work — found itself dangerously close to the front line. UINP says the works were evacuated in time and kept safe. UINP puts the number of Bilokur’s works remaining in Ukrainian museums at about 300.