The Russians stole the painting by the Skadov artist “Song of the Zaporozhians” from the art museum in Kherson

This was reported in the Kherson Art Museum. Ivan Shulga, a famous Ukrainian painter, portraitist, master of the landscape and domestic genre, was born in the village of Mykhailivka, Skadovsky District, Kherson region.

In his youth, a peasant boy from a poor family received charitable assistance for his studies from the local intelligentsia. Shulga entered the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, studied in the studio of the well-known realist Ilya Ripin, who had a huge impact not only on the development of artistic abilities, but also on the plot basis of many of Shulga’s works, including his interest in the history of the Cossack era.

Unfortunately, during Soviet times, working in Kharkiv, he had to pay tribute to socialist realism, in particular, the industrial genre, painted commissioned paintings. The work “Song of the Zaporozhians”, created immediately after the end of the Second World War, is an ode to the Ukrainian defenders of the Motherland, a manifestation of conscious patriotism, referring to national history. It is interesting that the artist chose an everyday subject from the life of Ukrainian Cossacks, but achieved the monumentality of the images and, in general, the epic sound of the canvas.

Ivan Shulga’s painting “Song of the Zaporozhians” was stolen by the Russians before leaving Kherson in early November 2022. It is not known exactly where the canvas is now, most likely it is in the Simferopol Central Tavrida Museum together with the main part of the stolen museum collection, the Kherson Art Museum reported.