Walking along the path beaten by Shevchenko, Franko and Lesia Ukrainka we reached, eventually, free Ukraine…
Stepan Khvylia
Stepan Khvylia was a Ukrainian-Australian artist and theater actor (lyric tenor), winner of the prestigious Australian Art Award from Macquarie University.
The artist was born on January 1, 1916, in the village of Swerzhe in the Holm region (now the territory of Poland). In 1936 he graduated from the teachers’ seminary in Holm, then took painting lessons from a Polish artist Zenon Waśnewski. In 1940 he went to the Rivne Teachers’ Institute, but his studies there were interrupted by the Second World War. Under the German occupation, Khvylia was an actor in the Ukrainian theatre in Rivne and Yosyp Stadnyk’s Carpathian theatre in Drohobych. From 1945 to 1949, the artist worked in Bohdan Piurko’s Ukrainian opera ensemble in Munich. In 1949, Stepan Khvylia and his wife Stefania went to Australia and settled in Sydney. In 1950 he and Yaroslav Masliak set up the First Ukrainian Drama Company, and in 1952 – the Group (Club) of Stage Fans. In 1967, upon the foundation of the Ukrainian Artists Society of Australia (UASA), Khvylia started his vigorous painting career. He called his works “fantasies in color”, which were mainly realistic topics on an abstract background. The artist died in 2006. According to his will, a part of his heritage was handed over to the funds of the Museum of the Ukrainian Diaspora in Ukraine.
