Artists from across Ukraine made pilgrimages to Polina Rayko’s home, which many fear has been destroyed after Kakhovka dam collapse
olina Rayko only took up a paintbrush aged 69 and her only canvas was the walls of her modest village home. But in just six years, she created a national treasure, and became an icon of folk art in southernThat house, decorated with images inspired by the rich natural life of the floodplains that backed on to Rayko’s garden, is the latest casualty of the Kakhovka dam collapse.
Rayko spent her life in Oleshky village, in southern Kherson, among those worst affected by the flood unleashed last week. It is under Russian occupation, so no one has been able to go and assess the state of the house she turned into a masterpiece, but even the limited news that has filtered out is devastating.
“The last thing we know is that the neighbours said the first floor of their house was flooded, which means that Rayko’s will be submerged up to the roof,” said Simon Khramtsov, an artist and designer from Kherson, who works with the foundation that preserved Rayko’s work. “If something survives, it will be fragmentary.”The waters could go down, or if more of the dam collapses, rise further, the house could even be washed away entirely.
The outside of Rayko’s house, which was made of samanna, an unburned mixture of clay, straw, and sand.Rayko was part of an important tradition of naive or folk art in Ukraine that inspired more formally taught contemporaries. Perhaps the most famous of Polina’s predecessors in this tradition, painter Maria Prymachenko, has also been a target in this war. An attack on her native Ivankiv set a museum housing many of her works on fire, some were lost, and locals risked their lives
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