About the Author:
Maria Prymachenko (Ukrainian: Приймаченко Марія Оксентіївна) (1908–1997) was a Ukrainian village folk art painter, representative of naïve art. She is famous for her drawings, embroidery, and painting on ceramics.
Maria was a peasant woman. She was born and spent her whole life in the village of Bolotnya in the Ivankiv Raion, Kiev Oblast, situated only 30 km (19 mi) from Chernobyl.
Іn her childhood Maria was taken ill with polio, and this painful disease influenced the girl’s life.
In 1966, Prymachenko was awarded the Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared that 2009 was the year of Prymachenko. A street in Kyiv and a minor planet are both named after her. Pablo Picasso once said, after visiting a Prymachenko exhibition in Paris, “I bow down before the artistic miracle of this brilliant Ukrainian.”
