Mychajlo DMYTRENKO  1908 — 1996

Михайло Сергійович ДМИТРЕНКО • Михаил Сергеевич ДМИТРЕНКО

Mychajlo Dmytrenko was born in Lokhvytsi, Poltava region in 1908. Ukrainian artist, known for his active life as a promoter of Ukrainian art in diaspora in the U.S.A. and Canada. He graduated from the Kyiv State Art Institute in 1930, where he studied in the studio of Fedir Krychevsky, and worked as his assistant and subsequently as professor of drawing at the Art Institute in 1935-1939. In 1939 Mr. Dmytrenko was in Lviv, where he was active in the organization of the association of Ukrainian artists, both under the Soviet and German occupations of western Ukraine. In 1944 he settled in Munich, where the artist organized the Ukrainian Association of Artists (Ukrainska Spilka Obrazotvorchykh Mysttsiv, 1947-1951). Dmytrenko was also an editor of the association’s art journal Ukrainske Mystetstvo (1947). In 1951 the artist emigrated to Canada and settled in Toronto. In 1955 he founded the Ukrainian Association of Creative Artists in Canada. In 1960 he settled in Detroit were he worked for an architectural firm. Dmytrenko exhibited at the Arts Pavilion at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto in 1954; and MacGregor Memorial Community Arts Center at Wayne State University in Detroit in 1960. He painted a number of portraits, especially of women; specialized in graphic art and illustration, as well as icon and mural painting, and the design of mosaics and stained-glass. Dmytrenko designed and executed interiors of a number of churches in North America, including St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church in South Bend, Ind. (1956), St. Colomba Roman Catholic Cathedral in Youngstown, Ohio (1957), St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral in Toronto (jointly with Volodymyr Balas and Ivan Kubarsky); Immaculate Conception Ukrainian Catholic Church in Hamtramck, Mich. (1961-1964); St. Constantine Ukrainian Catholic Church in Minneapolis, Minn. (1972-1977); and St. Eugene Byzantine Catholic Church in Bedford, Ohio (1976), and St. George Ukrainian Catholic Church in New York (1977-1989). A monograph of the artist`s work was published in 1990. In 1995 the artist established the Mychajlo Dmytrenko Arts Foundation in Santa Ana, California, for the purpose of awarding scholarships to art students. Dmytrenko died in 1996.