Emma Andijewska

For me, Ukraine is everywhere where someone speaks Ukrainian

Emma Andijewska

Emma Andijewska is a Ukrainian artist, writer, and poet. Her oeuvre includes more than 17,000 paintings, more than 40 prose works, 215 sonnets, and many poems. The artist’s works are kept in museums and private collections worldwide.

Emma Andijewska was born in 1931 in Stalino (modern Donetsk) to a chemist-inventor’s family. The artist has displayed remarkable talent and a strong passion for creativity since early childhood.

In 1937, when Emma turned six, the family moved to the Kyiv region on doctors’ recommendation that Emma should live in a more favorable climate. At first, the family settled in Vyshhorod, and in 1939, they moved to Kyiv. In 1941, while retreating, the Soviet authorities shot the artist’s father. So, her mother, concerned about the family’s safety, decided to leave Ukraine.

After emigrating to Berlin, the Andijewska family faced financial struggles, and they were compelled to hide their Ukrainian heritage by adopting false German surnames and fictitious life stories. Emma’s health deteriorated, and she was diagnosed with spinal tuberculosis. After a complicated surgery, the artist spent three years in a plaster cast and then another eight years limited in movement by a medical corset.
At the end of 1949, during the Berlin blockade, Emma’s family was forced to move first to the DP camp in Mittenwald and later to Munich. Emma entered the Ukrainian Free University (UFU) there, choosing to study philology and philosophy. The artist studied Sanskrit and ancient Greek under the tutelage of Volodymyr Derzhavin, a prominent Ukrainian poet, translator, literary critic, and scholar.

In 1957, Andijewska’s family moved to the United States. The artist’s first job in New York was at the Norcross Greeting Card Company, where she worked as a greeting card designer. Emma met Ukrainian literary critic Ivan Koshelivets while working in a medical library. They moved to Munich and were married for 40 years.

In 1962, Emma Andijewska became an American citizen but decided to stay in Germany. She was one of the founding members of the Slovo Association of Ukrainian Writers. Until 1995, she worked at the Ukrainian branch of Radio Svoboda, performing various duties as an announcer, scriptwriter, director, and editor. In 1992, Emma visited Ukraine for the first time since emigrating.

In 2003, Andijewska received the International Gogol Literary Award “Triumph.” In May 2018, the writer was awarded the Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine.

Emma Andijewska’s paintings and literary heritage are phantasmagoric, surreal, and individual and original. The artist donated 24 works to the Museum of Ukrainian Diaspora. In 2021, an exhibition, “Tales of Emma the Traveler,” was opened here, with a release stating: “In her paintings, ordinary creatures take on bizarre shapes, and inanimate objects are transformed and become full-fledged characters. This creates a fantastic original world where, if you look closely, you can see the stories we have known since childhood—about curiosity and adventure, traveling and returning, love and friendship, quarrels and reconciliation, loyalty and support. About self-discovery. It is about expanding the boundaries of the possible. Ultimately, about being.”