Polina (Pelageya) Raiko, a lived of the village of Oleshki in the Kherson region, painted her house and yard. She started doing it at the sixty-nine. Then, for the first time in her life, she started to paint.
She reproduced unique images with ordinary, cheapest floor paints. She filled all surfaces with drawings: the ceiling and walls of the house, the fence. Her work became the personification of inner pain and love at one time. Experiencing grief, the brush became a salvation. Old woman’s drew with her heart.
Art critics, artists and journalists came to see the artist's fantasy creations with their own eyes. Over time, tourists came to the house from different parts of Ukraine, and later from other countries. Many visitors to the house noted that the atmosphere in the painted rooms is special.
The artist depicted various topics, including religious ones.
Polina Raiko liked to depict various birds. And in nature, she often observed, as if inspired by, the birds in the meadow near the river.
After her death, in 2005, the world saw the catalog of her works "Road to Paradise". It contains the plots of images and stories recorded from the words of the artist herself.
"It was such a shock for me when, after her death, we enter the house and see the last work she painted. The whole house is already painted, there is no living place, and the last place was the back of the mirror where she painted her portrait ", says historian and local expert Serhii Dyachenko.
Fantasy images.
"Polina Rayko is relevant. This is an obvious brand and not only of the Kherson region. She is a folk artist, as you said, naive art yes, but she - she solved all her compositions in a postmodern way, worked out her own style. I will say that painting ceilings and walls is hard work. This is her story on all the walls of the house, such a diary, memories, her world. At that time, she surprised and inspired us at the same time. Grace descended on her, it's a miracle," comments the artist Vyacheslav Mashnytskyi.
Birds have probably been drawn the most among all fictional and real animals
The house-museum of Polina Raiko is a unique heritage, a heritage of Ukrainian naive art. It is protected by the Law of Ukraine "On Protection of Cultural Heritage".
On the night of June 6, 2023, during the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian troops blew up the dam of the Kakhovskaya HPP, which caused a catastrophic flooding of the lower Dnipro. As a result, the house-museum of Polina Raiko was completely flooded by the waters of the Dnipro.
Thew first photos of the destroyed cultural heritage one were published.
On June 7, 2023, Semen Khramtsov, representative of the Kherson Regional Charitable Fund named after Polina Raiko, wrote "As of now, I know that the house with the frescoes is under water"
Now the works of the artist can be seen only in digitized format.
Unique images are destroyed by water.
The house-museum was completely flooded. Unfortunately, it is impossible to save such artistic monuments.
Leopards. That's how she called.
Petro Gonchar, general director of the Ivan Gonchar Museum of the Ivan Gonchar Museum, was shared his impressions: "When I entered Raiko's house, I felt as if I had already been there. For me it is an artistic paradise. I don't know what to call her work - a vision of this world that has passed through itself. These forms, this immediacy, these images, this inability to draw. With this inability to draw, Raiko convinces us that the world is unreal. We are used to exactly copying the environment of the world, and Raiko convinced that the world is not like that. She believes what she drew. With symbols and signs, she proves that the world is not like that, there is much more behind it, and it is expressed in the play of forms, color, texture, line, this wealth, which she did without analyzing and without knowing how she does it. The harmony of our world simply came out through her hand. It does not lend itself to literal analysis. I look at and experience this harmony, the beauty of the world, thanking her."
Everything was painted.
A picture with a personal story. Dedicated to the daughter who died in an accident.
Polina Raiko liked to depict various birds. And in nature, she often observed, as if inspired by, the birds in the meadow near the river.
A shot from Larisa Petrushenko film "The Road to Paradise".
Unfortunately, this is not the only stunning artistic loss for the southern region. The head of the State Tourism Development Agency of Ukraine Maryana Oleskiv, in an interview for Social Culture, said:
"According to preliminary data, 20 architectural monuments (Kherson and Nova Kakhovka), 560 archeological monuments, more than 100 monuments of history and monumental art, 4 museums were flooded as a result of the undermining by the troops of the Russian Federation of the Kakhovka HPP"
Photo:
Iryna Staroselets, Oleshki-Kherson pravda.com.us
Kateryna Kachur
Volodymyr Khomenko
Ukrainian Cultural Foundation "Ivan Honchar Museum"
Ukrainian Cultural Foundation of Anastasia Fedchenko
Charitable Foundation named after Polina Rayko
