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Biography

Andrei Prychodko, alternate spellings “Andrij” & “Andrii” Prychodko, alias “Andrew Pryce” Ukrainian: Андрій Миколайович Приходько, ipa pronunciation: /ɑnˈdʲrʲi mɪkɔˈlajɔvɪt͡ʃ prɪˈxɔdko/, born 1951 in Toronto, is a Swiss-Canadian artist of the Ukrainian Diaspora. Since 1978 he is married to the Swiss artist Amanda Bayard Prychodko.

​Prychodko’s entire extended family in Ukraine was imprisoned or perished under Russian colonial anti- Ukrainian policies.

His mother, author, editor and translator Olga Prychodko was the daughter of Ukrainian homesteaders in the Alberta wilderness of Canada. Her translation work has been referenced by many authors on Soviet history, such as Anne Applebaum. [a] Her Memoir “Waskatenau Girl” is excerpted in Canadian school anthologies. [b]

Prychodko’s father was the author, publicist and community figure, Nicholas F. Prychodko, survivor of the Holodomor, Gulag and Nazi imprisonment. Pre-Solzhenitsyn, he exposed the Russian Gulag system in his works, such as “One of the Fifteen Million,” prefaced by Walter Bedell Smith. He testified to the US congress regarding russian anti-Ukrainian genocides. [c]

Andrii grew up in an emigé environment of literature, music and activism for Ukraine and its culture. His familys’ closest friend was “the man who sparked the Cold War “ Igor Gouzenko. [d].

Andrii Prychodko has exhibited his art in Toronto, Rome, Zürich, Paris, New York, Geneva, including three times at Art Basel, etc. He was represented by two galleries who influenced art history: Studio Paul Facchetti in Paris and Galerie Nathan in Zurich. Facchetti represented him in personal and group shows, but especially by appointment only, from 1980 through 2007 and his work was acquired by collectors, such as Seymour H. Knox II. He began to exhibit with Paul Facchetti through the introduction of the Galerie Beyeler of Basel.

​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.) [e]

Previously, from 1976 to 1980, Prychodko had been represented by the gallerist Renata Avenali, at her Galleria Studio Erre in Rome, who represented modern and contemporary masters.

​In 1993 The ministersof culture of Ukraine and France chose Prychodko's art was chosen as the first conduit to re-establish cultural relations via the visual arts between France and post-Soviet Ukraine, whose Minister of Culture, Ivan Dziuba, writing to France's Minister of Culture, Jacques Toubon, wrote of 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 “a language entirely their own”[4] “enigmatic, facetious,”[5] “childlike, poetic and grotesque”,[6] “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 between the artist and his own compositions.” 

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 pertinent to drawing at the Universities of Toronto and Paris VII.

Fluent in five 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.​

References

​[a] https://ukrainian-studies.ca/2019/04/25/anne-applebaum-red-famine-stalins-war-on-ukraine-book-review/

[b] https://www.abebooks.co.uk/Black-Deeds-Kremlin-White-Book-Vol/31011948586/bd

https://www.calla.com/wordpress/kobzars-children-more-info/

https://books.google.ch/books/about/Waskatenau_Girl_a_Ukrainian_Canadian_Pio.html?id=-5Y-ywAACAAJ&redir_esc=y

[c] https://www.nytimes.com/1952/07/10/archives/books-of-the-times.html

Struk, Danylo Husar, Editor, Encyclopedia of Ukraine, University of Toronto Press Incorporated 1993, Toronto, Buffalo, London  Volume

 

IV pp. 259

[d]https://www.google.com/search?q=igor+gouzenko&oq=Igor&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqDwgAEAAYQxjjAhiABBiKBTIPCAAQABhD

GOMCGIAEGIoFMgwIARAuGEMYgAQYigUyBggCEEUYOTIQCAMQLhiDARjUAhixAxiABDIQCAQQLhiDARjUAhixAxiABDINC

AUQABiDARixAxiABDIKCAYQLhixAxiABDINCAcQLhiDARixAxiABDINCAgQLhivARjHARiABDIMCAkQABhDGIAEGIoF0gEJ

NDY0OWowajE1qAIIsAIB&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

[e] 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

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