Vasyl Krychevsky (Junior)

Vasyl Krychevsky, the younger son of Vasyl Hryhorovych Krychevsky, became famous both in our country and abroad. His biography is like an adventure novel, where there was a place for creative achievements and tragic incidents, risk and perseverance, love and fame.

Andrii Helmintinov, Director of
the Lebedyn Municipal Art Museum, named after B. Rudnev

Vasyl Krychevsky Jr. was a Ukrainian-American artist, art teacher, ahonorary member of the Ukrainian Artists’ Association in the USA.

Born on March 18, 1901, in Kharkiv in the family of the prominent artist Vasyl Krychevsky, he got his primary education at the 4th Kyiv Gymnasium. In 1923, he graduated from the Kyiv Art Institute (his father’s studio). He worked as a movie designer  at the Kyiv and Odesa film studios, collaborated with Oleksandr Dovzhenko, and worked on 16 films, including “Earth” (1930). In the 1930s, he taught at the Kyiv Art and Industrial Vocational School and collaborated with book publishers. 

In 1943, during the German occupation of Kyiv, he participated in local art exhibitions. In the same year, he moved to Prague with his wife Olena and daughter Kateryna. After the end of the war, family stayed in the German DP camp in Mannheim and, in 1949, emigrated overseas. In America, Krychevsky earned a living as an unskilled worker. Still, he also found time for art, creating numerous American and Ukrainian landscapes from memory, and worked in advertising design. The artist died in Palo Alto on June 16, 1978, and was buried at St. Andrew’s Ukrainian Cemetery in South Bound Brook, New Jersey.