The 14 Paintings Carried Out of a Burning Museum: Painter Maria Prymachenko

On February 28, 2022, Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture and Information Policy announced that the Ivankiv Local History Museum in Kyiv Oblast had burned down on February 26. This happened as Russian forces advanced into Kyiv Oblast, and the town was still under occupation. The museum’s collection included roughly 20 works by the painter Maria Prymachenko (1909–1997).

In the same announcement, the Ministry of Culture asked journalists and activists not to publicize how the museum and residents had protected the collection or where it had been moved. It was only after Kyiv Oblast was liberated that it became publicly known whether the works were safe.

The Woman Who Kept Painting in the Village of Bolotnia

According to Ukraine’s national encyclopedia, the Great Ukrainian Encyclopedia (VUE), Prymachenko was born on January 12, 1909, in the village of Bolotnia in Kyiv Oblast (now in Vyshhorod district), to a carpenter father and an embroiderer mother. Apart from studying and working at a workshop in Kyiv in 1935–36, she spent her whole life in this village, and died there on August 18, 1997.

The Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (IEU), published by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) at the University of Alberta, gives her date of birth as December 30, 1908. The 13-day difference from January 12 corresponds to the gap between the Julian calendar used in the Russian Empire at the time and the calendar used today. A presidential decree from July 2008 likewise places her 100th anniversary in "December 2008," apparently reckoned on this same basis.

There are also two spellings of her name in Ukrainian: Примаченко (Prymachenko) and Приймаченко (Pryimachenko). A Verkhovna Rada resolution from December 2008 gives both, while the 2008 presidential decree uses the latter. In Japanese, she is most often referred to as "Prymachenko," and this article follows that spelling.

Animals, Flowers, and Words Against War

Prymachenko’s paintings are described as naive art. The Great Ukrainian Encyclopedia explains that her central theme was the struggle between good and evil, that she painted fantastical animals and flowers and rural life, and that she wrote proverb-like titles on the paintings herself. It puts her body of work at more than 1,000 pieces, though the IEU entry, based on a volume published in 1993, gives "more than 500" — the count differs depending on how the works are counted and at what point in time.

Among the works cited as representative are the following.

• The series "Animals of Bolotnia (Звірі в Болотні)" (1935–41)
• The series "For People’s Joy (Людям на радість)" (1960–66), which received the Taras Shevchenko National Prize of the Ukrainian SSR in 1966
• "Damn You, War! (Будь проклята війна!)" (1984)
• A series on the theme of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster (IEU)

She also painted a number of works based on the life and work of the poet Taras Shevchenko (on Shevchenko, see our article on the poet whom the tsar forbade to paint or write, Taras Shevchenko). According to the IEU, she also illustrated a children’s poetry collection by the writer Mykhailo Stelmakh. In 1988, she received the title of People’s Artist of the Ukrainian SSR.

The largest holder of her work is the National Museum of Ukrainian Folk Decorative Art in Kyiv, which the Great Ukrainian Encyclopedia says holds about 650 pieces. Even after the Ivankiv museum burned, the great majority of her work remains there.

What Was UNESCO’s "Year of Prymachenko"?

Official Ukrainian sources often state that "UNESCO declared 2009 the Year of Prymachenko." The Great Ukrainian Encyclopedia says this too.

Looking at UNESCO’s own documents, the picture is a little different. A March 9, 2007 document of the Executive Board (176 EX/47) lists the anniversaries for 2008–2009, proposed by member states, with which UNESCO could be "associated." It states that Ukraine’s National Commission for UNESCO requested association with "the 100th anniversary of the birth of the painter Maria Prymachenko," and that the Director-General proposed association on the grounds that it met the criteria. This was not a commemorative year that UNESCO itself designated, but a mechanism by which UNESCO lent its name to a 100th-anniversary commemoration that Ukraine had proposed.

Within Ukraine, President Yushchenko, in Presidential Decree No. 636 of July 21, 2008, ordered the Cabinet of Ministers to set up a committee to prepare 100th-anniversary commemorations. These included an exhibition, the publication of a collection of her works, a documentary film, the issuance of a commemorative coin and postage stamp, and consideration of naming a street in Kyiv after her and erecting a monument. The Verkhovna Rada, too, in its resolution of December 25, 2008, included the January 12 100th anniversary among the anniversaries to be marked nationally in 2009. In 2009, a monument was erected on the grounds of the Kyiv National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture.

The Burned Museum and the 14 Paintings That Were Saved

The Ivankiv museum, according to the Ministry of Culture’s recovery-support site, was founded in 1980 by a local local-history enthusiast and held 410 items. Alongside fragments of mammoth bone, old coins, Cossack weapons, and items relating to the Second World War and the Chornobyl disaster, Prymachenko’s paintings were the pride of the collection.

On September 21, 2022, the exhibition "Maria Prymachenko: What Was Saved" opened in Kyiv. According to the Ministry of Culture’s announcement, the 14 paintings on display were the ones that had been saved, and this was the first time they had been shown publicly since the full-scale invasion. A Russian missile had destroyed the museum building, but museum staff and residents had carried the paintings out, and had not disclosed this until Kyiv Oblast was liberated. The exhibition was open to the public from September 22 to 25, at the "Ukrainian House" on Khreshchatyk Street in Kyiv.

At the event, then–Minister of Culture Tkachenko named and thanked the residents who had carried out the rescue, saying, "Russians can target our buildings, but they cannot target our identity." At the same event, plans were also announced to rebuild the museum and to build a residence for artists in the village of Bolotnia, where Prymachenko’s house still stands.

President Zelensky, in Presidential Decree No. 588 of August 20, 2022, posthumously awarded Prymachenko the title "National Legend of Ukraine."

As of September 2026, Rebuilding Is Still Ahead

The museum has not yet been rebuilt. In 2025, the Ministry of Culture established the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Fund, gathering funding from other countries to restore cultural institutions damaged by the war. According to an August 5, 2026 government announcement, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture Berezhna said that the fund’s next major project would be the reconstruction of the Ivankiv Local History Museum.

The 14 paintings carried out of the burned building, and the several hundred works that remain at the museum in Kyiv, carry the work of a village-born painter, born in 1909, forward past the full-scale invasion. Other examples of Ukrainian folk art are introduced in our articles on pysanka and vyshyvanka.