Mykola Ivasiuk
1865–1937 · Ukrainian history painter and stamp designer
Mykola Ivasyuk was a Ukrainian realist painter from Bukovina, born in Zastavna. He specialized in history painting, though he is also known for his postage stamp designs. His work is closely associated with the Cossack nationalist themes of Ukrainian painting.
He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and later in Munich, where he met the Russian painter Ilya Repin, who advised him to settle in Kyiv. He worked mainly in Chernivtsi from the late 1890s, where he founded a school for talented but poor young people. His best-known work is The Entrance of Bohdan Khmelnytsky to Kyiv in 1649, painted in 1912 and held by the National Art Museum of Ukraine, and he also painted The Battle of Zhovti Vody.
In 1919 the Directorate of Ukraine commissioned him to design postage stamps for the Ukrainian People's Republic. He produced fourteen designs, printed in 1921, but they were never used after the Soviets took control of Ukraine. In 1926 he moved to Kyiv to teach at the Kyiv Art Institute.
In 1937 he was arrested by the NKVD on charges of belonging to a nationalist organization and was executed that same year. He was rehabilitated in 1980.