Ukrainian artist Okhrim Kravchenko (1903 – 1985) studied at the Kyiv Art-Industrial College (1921–1924). In the fall of 1924, he entered the Painter Department of the Kyiv Art Institute.
After graduating in 1930 Kravchenko was unexpectedly arrested “for systematic anti-Soviet activity” and was sentenced to exile in Kotlas on the Northern Dvina.
Kravchenko was allowed to return to Kryvvi Rih before the war but when in 1942 many OUN members were arrested and executed he decided to go to Kyiv on foot.
Trying to avoid possible post-war persecution Kravchenko moved to Lviv in 1946. There he was offered a job teaching at the School of Applied and Decorative Art.
At the time of Khrushchev Thaw Lviv became the center of national creative research, leaving Kyiv “with its dullness of the official socialist realism” far behind. Incited by the process of national revival, Kravchenko took his own niche in the artistic life of Lviv, clearly and regularly declaring principles of monumentalism on his canvases.
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