Biography
Andrei Prychodko, (alternate spellings “Andrij” & “Andrii” Prychodko) born 1951 in Toronto, is a Swiss-Canadian artist of the Ukrainian Diaspora.
His entire extended families in Ukraine were decimated by the cultural genocidal policies of the Russian people against Ukrainians, ongoing for four centuries but only finally beginning to be acknowledged by the world since Feb 24 2022. His father, the writer & publicist Nicholas F. Prychodko survived two russian Holodomors, two years of russian imprisonment under torture, slave labor in siberia, internal exile and Nazi imprisonment. He also escaped the allies' infamous "Operation Keelhaul" by which they sent 3.5 million Ukrainians back into Russian hands, where they were either immediately executed or worked to death at slave labor in russia's Siberia. His first book on Russian genocide predated Solzhenitsyn and was prefaced by Walter Bedell-Smith, one of the three signatories of the European peace in 1945. He came to Canada in 1948, where Andrii was born...
Andrii Prychodko has exhibited in Toronto, Rome, Zürich, Paris, New York, Geneva, Art Basel, etc. notably with the galleries Studio Paul Facchetti in Paris and Galerie Nathan in Zurich. He began to exhibit with Paul Facchetti through the introduction of the Galerie Beyeler of Basel.
Prychodko is the last artist to be discovered, independently of one another, by both Paul Facchetti and by Peter Nathan. Cumulatively, they represented him, especially by appointment only, from 1980 through 2007 and his work was acquired by their collectors, such as Seymour H. Knox II.
(Paul Facchetti is known for his role in discovering and bringing into the canon such previously little known artists as Jackson Pollock, Dubuffet, Fautrier, Sam Francis, Henri Michaux, Wols, Riopelle, Mathieu, Capogrossi, Sima, Kemeny, Appel, Hundertwasser et al.
The four-generation Galerie Nathan of Zürich was instrumental in building the Oskar Reinhart and Bührle Museum collections. Prychodko exhibited there under the patronage of the Canadian ambassador. Peter Nathan wrote of Prychodko as among his eight most important exhibitors together with Chaissac, Estève, Lapicque, Lobo, Meistermann, De Staël and Felix Valloton.)[a]
In 1993 Andrei Prychodko's art was chosen to spearhead the re-establishing of cultural relations via the visual arts between two nations: France and post-Soviet Ukraine, whose Minister of Culture, Ivan Dziuba, writing to France's Minister of Culture, Jacques Toubon, called Prychodko’s art, “…a contemporary bridge from the Ukrainian avant-garde of Malevich, Archipenko, Larionov, Sonia Delaunay-Terk et al.”[1]
The Encyclopedia of Ukraine documents Prychodko's unusual use of color, symbolist signs, unorthodox techniques and the paradox of spontaneity and control in his work.[2]
His paintings have been called “archaic ciphers,”[3] “a language entirely their own”[4] “enigmatic, facetious,”[5] “childlike, poetic and grotesque”[6] and dubbed, “chromatic gesture colliding with Byzantine tradition.” [7]
In its strata of meaning, his art has been compared to the writing of Jorge Luis Borges[8] and Switzerland’s Neue Zürcher Zeitung speaks of “Western and Eastern elements inter-layered in time and space.”[9] Toronto’s Globe and Mail evokes, “a relentless microscope turned on the artist- but by himself.”[10]
France’s l’Oeil speaks of “a joust of dramatic ideas with figurative means and between the artist and his own compositions.” [11] Die Weltwoche says that Prychodko, “stage- directs elaborate, enigmatic, facetious, mise-en scenes…”[12]
The exhibition monograph of his painting, published by Peter Nathan, is archived in over forty world institutions such as the Louvre, Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Tate Gallery, & Victoria and Albert Museum, London, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Detroit Institute of Art, USA, Ludwig Museum, Cologne, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection Venice, the Documenta Archive, Kassel, the Harald Szeeman Collection, Los Angeles, etc.
Following senior matriculation Prychodko worked in the newsroom, then as chief librarian/archivist[13] of the Toronto Telegram, Canada’s second largest newspaper, but soon left to study briefly at Toronto’s New School of Art. Based in Europe since 1971, Prychodko followed self-directed, non-curricular studies at l’ École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris, where he was accepted in the highest category, as well as at the Accademia di Belle Arti and Scuola Libera del Nudo in Florence. By special permissions he copied master drawings at il Gabinetto dei Disegni of the Uffizi and studied anatomy at the Universities of Toronto and Paris VII.
Fluent in six languages, Prychodko has lived and painted on four continents- in Toronto, New York, Switzerland, Mexico, India, etc and was based for 21 years in Paris. His studios were in such places as a former romanesque chapel in Chianti, Tuscany, the Hotel Chelsea, New York, in the former City Hall of San Cristobal las Casas, Mexico, In the Himalayas, on the Ganges ghats in Benares, India, and in the Swiss Alps...
Referring to all this, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung sees his art as “issuing from borderless cultural/historical cross-references.”[14]
Andrei Prychodko is a recipient of Awards from the Ontario Arts Council, Toronto, the Academy of Fine Arts, Athens and the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, Montreal.
He currently resides with his wife, the artist Amanda Bayard,[15] at Crans-Montana, Switzerland.
[a] Peter Baum, Gaston Diehl, Peter Nathan “Lobo Skulpturen” Unsere Wichtigsten Austellungen“ pp.44 Editions Galerie Nathan, Zürich, 1996
[1] Ministère de la Culture de France, le Ministre, lettre 160715- 24 juin 94 Міністерство Культурі Украйні Київ, Ministry of Culture of Ukraine, Kyiv, the Minister, letter 1-980/39, 10 09/93
[2] Struk, Danylo Husar, Editor, Encyclopedia of Ukraine, University of Toronto Press Incorporated 1993, Toronto, Buffalo, London Volume IV pp. 257 & 258
[3] Anonymous, “Archaic Ciphers” Zürich News, Wochenbulletin, 31 March, 1984, pp. 11
[4] Billeter, Fritz, “Happy-Sad Spirits“ Fröhlich-Traurige Gespenster“ Prychodko at Galerie Facchetti Zürich, the Tages Anzeiger''', Zürich Switzerland, June 18, 1980 pp. 24
[5]Bernimoulin, Gundel, the Tages Anzeiger, Switzerland, "die Innere Dimension der Dinge" (the Inner Dimension of Things) Tages Anzeiger, Zürich, 22 Nov 1982 pp24
[6] Billeter, Fritz, Tages Anzeiger, Zürich,"Malerishce Gesten und abstrakte Zeichen" (Painterly Gestures and Abstract Signs) Prychodko in der Galerie Paul Facchettti, Dienstag 10 April, 1984
[7] Tallarico, Luigi,"Andrij Prychodko, una Esplosione di Vitalità" (Andrij Prychodko, an Explosion of Vitality) Il Secolo d'Italia, Roma, Mercoledi 15 febbraio, 1978
[8] Anonymous, “Archaic Ciphers” Zürich News, Wochenbulletin, 31 March, 1984, pp. 11.
[9] Anonymous“ Prychodko, Galerie Nathan,“ Neue Zürcher Zeitung, March 12, 1987, pp. 42
[10] Kritzweiser, Kay, “Creative Bridge Links Art and Poetry”, Prychodko at OISE Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, The Globe and Mail, Toronto, Sat.May 4,1974 pp32
[11] Affentranger, Angelika, l’Oeil, Paris, no. 381 avril 1987, Galeries/Prychodko
[12] ] Monteil, Annemarie, „Spiele auf vielerlei Ebenen“ (Playing on Multiple Levels) Prychodko in the Galerie Nathan, Zürich, die Weltwoche, Zürich, 19 März 1987 pp 69
[13] ] https://www.library.yorku.ca/web/archives/finding-aids/telegram1/
[14]Anonymous“ Prychodko, Galerie Nathan,“ Neue Zürcher Zeitung, March 12, 1987, pp. 42
[15] https://www.amandabayard.com