Kateryna Bilokur, the Genial Self-Taught Painter Who Loved Flowers More Than Life

Flowers filled all her big heart and all her dismal life. She must have had the soul of a bee, seeing the world in different, brighter colors and flying from flower to flower to partake of their divine gift. She painted flowers as long as she lived, bringing out the unfading beauty of the generous Ukrainian land, and her name – Kateryna Bilokur – stands out like a beautiful flower among the best Ukrainian folk artists.

When Pablo Picasso saw her paintings at the international exhibition in Paris in 1954, he said in fascination, “If we had such a masterful painter, we would have the whole world talking about her!”

He compared Bilokur to another great self-taught painter, Seraphine Louise Sanly, and called her a “genius” – quite strange of Picasso who usually spoke of contemporary arts in no uncertain terms like “I’m drowning in shit.”

The genial Ukrainian painter was born on Nov. 25, 1900, in the village of Bohdanivka, a hundred miles east of Kyiv. Her parents were quite well-to-do but very stingy. They had a big house and a large plot of land and kept cattle and poultry. She also had two brothers, and everyone worked hard all day long throughout the year.

Kateryna learned to read when she was six. Her father and grandfather were so impressed by her reading skills that they decided not to send her to school: after all, they reasoned, she was already literate, so they could save a lot on her clothing. They thought the spinning loom and housework would be better for her and only allowed her to read her ABC book.

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She made her first drawings in her early teens with charcoal on pieces of canvas and the whitewashed stove. When her parents caught her doing such a foolish thing, they strictly forbade her to paint or even draw, so she had to enjoy her hobby secretly.

Unlike her parents, everyone else in the village appreciated her gift. The local landlord and owner of a watermill, who was an enthusiastic fan of theater, organized something like a drama studio in the village. The plays he staged had a big local success. One day, he asked Kateryna, who had just turned 16, to help him with the set design. The girl gladly took on it: she designed and painted the sets for the play and even played a part in it. But her mother grumbled, “Why did God punish me with such a daughter? All my neighbors have their daughters married at this age and have sons-in-law and grandchildren, and my daughter only keeps painting the hell knows what!”

Kateryna applied for a school of artistic ceramics in Myrhorod, Poltava province, but was not admitted. The admissions commission never even looked at her works – simply because she had no school certificate. Distressed and crushed, she walked 60 miles back home… Yet she did not give up painting.

She also attended a drama circle organized by the local schoolteachers that basically dramatized Ukrainian classics. Kateryna’s parents told her, “Alright, you can go to that theater of yours, but not at the expense of house- and garden work.”

In the drama circle Kateryna mostly played the parts of young matrons as she was 25 – a bit too old for the roles of young girls. She made friends with very interesting and gifted young people. One of them was a handsome young man whose name was Oleksandr Kravchenko. He was in love with her, and she liked him too, but she turned him down the day he gave her a bunch of flowers. She told him, “If you’re so cruel to flowers, how can you be kind to me?” She always painted live flowers only and never plucked a single one…

At 28, Kateryna went to Kyiv to apply for a drama school – perhaps because of her stage experience, or simply because she wanted to break away from the fetters of the household routine she loathed. But she was sent away – again because she had no school certificate.

That was the hardest period in her life. Bored and exhausted by the tedious routine and feeling no sympathy, let alone support from her family, she was so desperate that at times she even tried to commit suicide. In the late fall of 1934, she tried to drown in the river but was pulled out and resuscitated. As a result, she suffered from severe pain in her legs until her last days. But that was when she made her firm and final choice: she decided to learn to paint on her own.

Her father said, “Alright, go on with your goddamn painting! You won’t listen to words and I’m tired of beating you!” Her mother was of the same mind.

She gave up pencil, charcoal and watercolors for oils. She made her own brushes from hairs of a cat’s tail and used a different brush for each color. A local icon painter taught her how to prime canvases and some oil painting techniques as well.

In 1934, Bilokur painted The Birch, one of three canvasses that made her world-famous, and a year later she produced another masterpiece, Flowers at the Lath Fence.

The Birch. Oils, 1934

Flowers at the Lath Fence. Oils, 1935

The year 1939 was a turning point in Bilokur’s life. At 39, she had no husband and no children and was too old to have any, and the village folk had long gotten used to her weird hobby. One day, she went to see her cousin who lived across the river. In her house, one of the very few with a radio, she heard a beautiful folk song about a blooming viburnum.

The voice of the famous opera singer Oksana Petrusenko impressed her so deeply that she spent the whole night writing a letter to her. Enclosing her picture of a viburnum on a piece of canvas, she wrote the address: “Oksana Petrusenko, Academic Theater, Kyiv.” The address was incomplete, of course, but the letter did reach the well-known addressee.

Petrusenko showed the picture to her friend Pavlo Tychyna, the famous poet, and to the Center of Folk Arts. Officials at the Culture Ministry got interested and all authoritative art critics were amazed. It was immediately decided to display Bilokur’s paintings at a solo exhibition in Poltava.

There were only 11 canvases on display, but they made a tremendous success. Bilokur was granted a free trip to Moscow where she visited the Tretyakov Gallery and the Pushkin Museum. Stunned by French impressionists and portraits and landscapes by Russian and Dutch painters, she felt small and unworthy of painting. She said: “I can’t be a painter! I’m nothing! My smearing is good for nothing! I saw such great, beautiful paintings there! How can a silly hick like me ever think of any painting skills? Can I ever produce anything good?”

But flowers compelled her to paint and soon she took up her brushes again to paint one of her best canvases, Wild Flowers. She painted it in the same old place – her village house where she had survived the Nazi occupation and was now busy around the clock with the garden, chores and her ailing mother.

Wild Flowers. Oils, 1941

In 1944, the director of the Museum of Ukrainian Folk Decorative Arts visited the village and told Bilokur that he wanted to exhibit her paintings in the museum. He even bought a dozen.

In the decade that followed Bilokur painted her famous canvases: Decorative Flowers; Hail Harvest; Kolkhoz Field; Breakfast; Flowers and a Birch at Sunset; Watermelon, Carrots and Flowers; Flowers and Grapes; Dahlias; and Peonies.

Decorative Flowers

Hail Harvest

Kolkhoz Field

Breakfast

Flowers and a Birch at Sunset

Watermelon

Wheat, Flowers and Grapes

Dahlias

Peonies

She always painted live flowers, often combining in one painting flowers that bloomed in different seasons, like tulips and chrysanthemums. Naturally, it took a long time, sometimes several months. She worked enthusiastically but never hurried. She painted six dahlias in the picture Kolkhoz Field for three weeks until she was finally satisfied with the result.

By the early 1950s, Bilokur was already famous countrywide: she was a member of the Union of Artists of Ukraine and held the honorable title of People’s Artist of Ukraine. Her works were widely discussed in the press, studied at art schools and exhibited in Poltava, Kyiv, Moscow and other cities across the USSR as well as abroad. She kept up correspondence with famous artists, poets, musicians and art critics. In her village she gladly taught her young disciples who later became renowned Ukrainian painters.

She always dreamed of living in Kyiv where she could see her friends and go to museums, exhibitions and concerts, and where living conditions (with electricity, running hot and cold water, heating and other conveniences) were far better than in her remote village.

Now her dream seemed to come true: as a People’s Artist, she was entitled to a free apartment and could afford a decent living in the capital city. Yet she never used the opportunity because she had her old ailing mother on her hands. On top of that, her brother moved into her house with his wife and five children, and she had to tend the whole big family. And there was not a day without a brawl between her mother and sister-in-law who had long hated each other.

Bilokur knew that she would never break out of that prison. Painting in her small room was her only distraction, comfort and joy. And every spring, when flowers began to bloom, she felt like born again, though it was harder and harder to bear the severe pain in her legs. Her friends in Kyiv sent her pills, but they were of little help.

Self-Portrait. Charcoal, 1957

In early June 1961, her 94-year-old mother died. After the funeral, utterly exhausted and run down by pain, she was taken to a district hospital for surgery which was fatal. She died on June 10, when Nature was in its prime and the Sun rose the highest to brighten her favorite colors…

Now the house where she lived is a museum that keeps her tableware and household utensils, the clothes that she wore, the books that she read, and the brushes that she painted with. There stands a sculpture of her chiseled by her nephew. Standing in front of it, her sister-in-law said, “At last, Kateryna, you are in your own house forever!” She may not only have meant the village house…

Its door is always open, and people come from far and wide to pay homage to Kateryna Bilokur, the genial self-taught painter who loved flowers more than life and whose brush was driven by her heart.

Sculpture of Kateryna Bilokur in front of her house-turned-museum