Лесь Лозовський

Activity: Culture
Date of birth: September 12, 1900, Kyiv
Date of death: March 22, 1922, Kyiv
Navigator: World Wars

Ukrainian graphic artist, engraver, illustrator, and student of Heorhiy Narbut and Mykhailo Boichuk.

Ukrainian graphic artist, engraver, illustrator, and student of Heorhiy Narbut and Mykhailo Boichuk. Born on September 12, 1900, in Kyiv. He was murdered in his own home on March 22, 1922—the motives and identity of the killer remain unknown.
Oleksandr Lozovskyi was born into a family of a milkman and an actress. Together with his brother, he was raised by relatives in the countryside, and at the age of 15, he entered the Kyiv Art School. Later, he studied in Moscow at the Stroganov School. When the Ukrainian Academy of Arts opened in Kyiv in 1917, he became one of its first students.
Lozovskyi worked in the workshops of the prominent art masters of his time: Vasyl Krychevskyi, Mykhailo Boichuk, Vadym Meller, Oleksandra Ekster, Oleksandr Murashko, and Heorhiy Narbut, who was his main teacher and inspiration. “Les Lozovskyi was our class monitor and was responsible for the workshop’s external relations. He was often late for the beginning of classes, entering when the model was already posing. He would quickly unwind his long scarf, take off his dandyish sheepskin coat, and, shaking his black hair, sit down to work,” recalled Natalia Alekseyeva-Horbunova, a student at the Academy.
However, Lozovskyi stood out from other students not only because of his eccentric appearance. As an artist, he sought not merely to follow in the footsteps of his recognized teachers but to develop his own independent and authentic style. “Perhaps the only and strongest student at the Academy who truly benefited from studying old masters is Les Lozovskyi, who studied under Narbut and later under Boichuk,” wrote art historian Lev Dintses in the Shliakhy Mystetstva (Paths of Art) magazine in 1922.
Les Lozovskyi participated in the Academy’s annual report exhibitions in 1920 and 1921, where he presented, among other works, tempera-on-wood portraits of Lenin and Hryhoriy Skovoroda. He also drew caricatures and created watercolors. However, the main focus of his work was book graphics. He designed covers for Pavlo Tychyna’s poetry collections Clarinets of the Sun (second edition), Instead of Sonnets and Octaves, and The Plow, as well as for collections by Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi, Volodymyr Kobylanskyi, and Stepan Vasylchenko. Lozovskyi also developed his own typeface, which he used for book covers and sheet music collections. He worked on the design of Mykhaylo Semenko’s “rev-fut-poem” (revolutionary-futurist poem) Comrade Sun, but did not manage to finish this work.
On the night of March 22, 1922, Les Lozovskyi was strangled in his own apartment on Voznesenskyi Descent in Kyiv. Official sources stated robbery as the motive for the artist’s murder: “On the night of March 22, on Voznesenskyi Descent, bldg. 27, apt. 6, citizen Oleksandr Lozovskyi was killed by unknown perpetrators. The murder was committed for the purpose of robbery.” However, according to rumors circulating in artistic circles, jewelry was laid out on the pillow around the head of the murdered Lozovskyi—as if hinting that the murder had a different (likely political) nature. Artist Oksana Pavlenko recalled meeting Lozovskyi by chance on the street a few days before the murder; he was noticeably anxious and behaved strangely.
Les Lozovskyi’s works were exhibited posthumously with great success in Germany and Czechoslovakia. Today, publications featuring his illustrations are bibliographical rarities, and only five of his paintings have survived: one is kept in a private collection in Kyiv, two are in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, and two more belong to the collection of the National Art Museum of Ukraine.

Author: Olha Herasymenko