Under the unenviable conditions of emigration, Tsymbal managed to develop and sustain himself as an artist. While working mostly for foreign clients, he managed to preserve his Ukrainian individuality and contribute valuable aspects of his talent to Ukrainian culture.
Sviatoslav Hordynskyi, artist, art critic
Viktor Tsymbal (pseudonym – Tsvirkun, cryptonyms “V.Ts.” and “Ts”) was a Ukrainian graphic artist and Neosymbolist painter, landscape artist and author of numerous works on religious and historical themes, a master of caricature and advertising graphics, who spent most of his life in exile in Argentina and the United States.
The future artist was born on May 1, 1902, in the village of Stupychne (modern Cherkasy region) into a family of teachers. The Tsymbal family all spoke Ukrainian and preserved Ukrainian traditions. For upholding these views, the artist’s father was repressed by the Soviet authorities and spent 4 years in prison in Volyn.
The Tsymbal family has lived in Kyiv since 1907. Viktor graduated from the Second Kyiv Gymnasium (School) named after the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood. In 1917, while still a high school student, the young man enrolled in the Student Battalion of Sich Riflemen. Most members of this battalion were tragically killed in 1918 near Kruty. Tsymbal was saved from this fate by his parents, who forced him to remain at home.
Viktor’s dream of studying at the Ukrainian Academy of Arts was never realized. Tsymbal joined the Ukrainian military and participated in combat until November 1920. After the defeat of the Ukrainian National Liberation struggle, Tsymbal, along with other soldiers, found himself in Poland in internment camps, first in Lancut and Wadowice, and later in Kalisz. He actively participated in the artistic life of the camps: he painted portraits, theater sets, caricatures, and created a series of drawings, “Types of Internees”, which were reproduced in the Warsaw newspaper, The Ukrainian Tribune, in 1921-1922.
In the early 1920’s, motivated by his desire to develop as an artist, Tsymbal illegally left Poland for Czechoslovakia. He enrolled in the School of Applied Arts in Prague (UPŠ) and attended classes at the Ukrainian Studio of Plastic Arts, and took a separate course in theatrical stage design at the Czech National Theater.
After graduating from the School of Applied Arts in late 1928, Tsymbal left for Argentina, where he spent the next 33 years. Initially, he worked as an advertising illustrator for magazines in Buenos Aires. Subsequently, leading Argentine companies began commissioning Tsymbal’s advertising drawings. Among them were the Argentine optical company Futz Ferrando, as well as numerous American and European companies that had branches in Argentina: General Motors, Ford, Kodak, National City Bank of New York, Coca-Cola, Swift Co., Martini, Opel, Nestle, and many others.
In addition to graphics, Viktor Tsymbal was also an avid painter. In the 1930s, the artist visited the Tierra del Fuego in Patagonia, where he painted a series of local landscapes. In 1936, his paintings were exhibited at his first solo exhibition at the Muller Gallery in Buenos Aires.
While living in Argentina, Tsymbal was actively involved in community service, including becoming the founder and the first honorary member of the Ukrainian House in Buenos Aires. Here he opened a Ukrainian school, collaborated with and made illustrations for Ukrainian publications in Argentina, and created a number of portraits of Ukrainian public and political figures. After World War II, in an effort to help newly arrived Ukrainian emigrants, he organized the Committee to Aid Refugees. Later, he co-founded the Congress of Ukrainians in Argentina.
A separate chapter in the artist’s work includes anti-Stalinist caricatures of the postwar period, debunking the widespread myth of happy Soviet life that was common at the time.
Viktor Tsymbal devoted a literary and illustrated work, “Lukomorya”, a parody on Alexander Pushkin’s poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila”, to this topic. The most famous caricature of this political satire is “Repatriation”, which depicts the forced return of refugees from displaced persons camps to the Soviet Union
In late 1959, shortly before leaving for the United States, Tsymbal organized his farewell exhibition at the Pevzer Gallery. This exhibition presented key paintings on Ukrainian themes: “Brothers-in-Arms,” “Three Souls”, based on the works of Taras Shevchenko, and a number of paintings on Ukrainian mythology and religious and mystical subjects.
On October 24, 1960, Viktor Tsymbal arrived in New York, where he immediately joined the Ukrainian Artists’ Association (UAA). At the end of the same year, he held his first solo American exhibition at the Ukrainian Literary and Art Club. Unable to acclimate himself to the fast pace of the big city, the artist moved to Detroit. While there, he worked mainly in advertising graphics and organized several more solo exhibitions.
Tsymbal died on May 28, 1968 in New York. He was interred in a cemetery in South Bound Brook. Most of the artist’s creative legacy is in private collections around the world, with only a few works in museum collections. In 2024, the artist’s great-grandson Anton Tsymbal presented the Museum of the Ukrainian Diaspora with the artist’s complete archive.
