Lyubov Panchenko, Ukrainian Folk Artist, a Victim of Russia's Genocide

Lyubov Panchenko, Red Viburnum, collage.

Motherhood, collage with coat fabric, at Sixtiers Dissident
Movement Museum, Kyiv. Interesting to know it exists.
Also, Panchenko was a fashion designer in the 60s, a reason
she often used fabric in her collages. 

Bucha, a northern suburb of the capital Kyiv, one of Putin's early targets in his personal vendetta war to annihilate Ukraine, lay in ruins after February 24. That's when Putin's unprovoked war began. He aimed to surround and occupy the ancient Ukrainian capital, but was pushed back. He had not expected it, and the revenge of his armed forces was fierce. 

When Russian forces withdrew from the Kyiv region, the vicious war crimes of the invaders were revealed, to the horror of the world. The suburb of Bucha was destroyed. Civilians were executed, raped, tortured, starved, shot while their hands were tied behind their backs, while walking their dog, while shopping, caring for the wounded, sleeping in their beds. War crimes. Documented, witnessed and recorded, by eye-witnesses and early investigators. Bucha, like Mariupol after it, became a symbol of Putin's full-fledged war against Ukraine--horrific, relentless, a genocide.

Lyubov Panchenko, In Starry Space, collage with coat fabric,
The Ukrainian Sixtiers Dissident Movement Museum, 

Kyiv, Ukraine.

Among the starved and the dead, we have recently learned, was 84-year-old Ukrainian artist Lyubov Panchenko (1938-2022), a long-time freedom fighter and social activist who aimed to preserve Ukrainian traditions and folklife through her art.

Bucha was her hometown, and it is her grave. She was found alone in her apartment, her dog by her side, starving slowly, barely conscious. A neighbor discovered her, alerted by her dog wandering the road in a lonely trek. Volunteers took Lyubov to a nearby hospital, but little could be done to save her. She died soon thereafter. "She was nothing but bones," a doctor said. 

And so this beloved folk artist became a victim of the Bucha massacre. Her death casts a pall across the cultural landscape of Ukraine. 

Lyubov lived alone and died alone. Survivors will remember her life-long fight for freedom, her involvement in the 1980s with the Sixtiers dissident movement, which fought against the Russification of Ukrainian culture, and her lifelong advocacy for a unique Ukrainian identity. (Note 1) 

Panchenko's Cossack on the Bandura, a 60-string Ukrainian folk instrument. I heard it played in Lviv..

I was not surprised but happy to learn she loved the poems of Taras Shevchenko, an early and equally strong advocate of a unique Ukrainian identity. "When I die, bury me on Ukraine's broad steppes...near the Dnieper River's great roar," he declared in his popular poem "Testament." Today, it is Shevchenko's poem "fight, and you will win," that resonates most loudly, a Ukrainian call to arms to defend their country against Russia.  

Aren't these Lyobov Panchenko designs gorgeous?  

Lyubov's nationalism did not endear her to the Soviet authorities, who could make her life miserable. She did not have a public exhibition of her work until 1992, after the fall of the Soviet Union. Imagine that!  She'd been practicing her art for over 40-50 years by then, her painting, collages and fashion designs. Yes, she also designed dresses adorned with exquisite Ukrainian motifs. I would love to know if any of them exist today, when Ukrainian attire is a proud symbol of Standing with Ukraine in war.

For the Soviets at that time, however, the 1960s through the 1980s, "she was guilty of being born in Ukraine, guilty for considering herself Ukrainian not Russian, and for promoting Ukrainian culture," noted Igor Kulyk, head of Ukraine's Archives of National Memory (note 4). She created in the shadows of Soviet oppression, as did most of her compatriot artists, poets, and creative thinkers of her time. 

An Unexpected Visitor.

After the early 1990s, Panchenko became famous for her collages. When people had the opportunity to see them, examine them, they were adored and celebrated. Her collages, those I've seen online, are fanciful, colorful, embracing a purity and innocence, a joy. Sometimes dark clouds appear around the edges. But mostly they evoke harmony, look to the past, honor it. 

Her death in Russia's 21st-century rerun of World War II, which we thought could never happen again, is tragic. For me, the collage above encompasses the surrealism of this holocaust: the unexpected visitor, the Russian bull, mean, power-hungry, threatening a smaller prey, stalking across the garden, out to destroy everything in its path. Not that Panchenko was any stranger to Russian cruelty. She lived through World War II and its aftermath. She resisted Soviet oppression. She had fought against it all her life.  She died because of it.

from 1994, bright and bold

The aggression that killed her had only strengthened her resolve to celebrate Ukrainian traditions until she took her last dying breath. “She was not broken by the KGB during Soviet times,” said Ukraine’s first lady Olena Zelenska. “But the Russian occupation broke her.” 

The Daily Art Magazine's Emily Snow, art critic, remembered her this way: "Lyubov Panchenko demonstrated the revolutionary power of art throughout 84 years of her life. Perhaps she would have found earlier success as an artist if not for Soviet censorship. She would likely still be crafting collages in her Bucha studio today if not for the latest Russian invasion."

"She was killed by the Russians," Igor Kulyk of the Ukraine Archives remarked, "But her legacy will live on." 

I think her legacy will become entwined like a vine she created into the story of RUs genocidal war, now in its 6th month. Putin's terrorism has leveled most of Ukraine's cities, towns and villages, and the vast farmlands surrounding them. The Donbas and southern Ukraine around the Black Sea have been hit the hardest. Ukraine is now receiving the advanced weapon systems they need to counterattack and conduct offensive battles against Russian positions. It's about time, because Ukraine is fighting World War III on its own, defending the West and Europe, and democracy around the world. 

Panchenko knew one thing in her heart and soul: Ukraine's art and folk traditions, its creativity and distinctive culture, will never be destroyed. Nor will Ukraine's independence and freedom. The land will be rebuilt on this promise, on this foundation. That will make Lyobov Panchenko smile. 

Sources/Notes

1.  https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/lyubov-panchenko/, by Emily Snow, remembering the artist. 

2.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaCD0XlxYgA, the horrors of Bucha, the war crimes, the cruelty.

3.  https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/20/europe/bucha-ukraine-reported-killings-intl/index.html, more evidence of Putin's sickening war crimes against civilians in Bucha.

4. https://kyivindependent.com/national/ukrainian-artist-liubov-panchenko-died-after-month-of-starvation-in-russian-occupied-bucha. The Kyiv Independent remembers Panchenko.