Robert Lisowsky

Encyclopedia of Ukraine: Robert Lisovsky was born on December 29, 1893 in Oleksandrivske (now Zaporizhia), Ukraine and died on December 28, 1982 in Geneva, Switzerland. Painter and graphic artist; husband ofS. Turkevych-Lukianovych and father of Zoya Lisovsky. He studied in Kyiv at O. Murashko's art school, under M. Boichuk and H. Narbut at theUkrainian Academy of Arts (1917-20), and at the Berlin Academy of Arts (1927). An émigré from 1920, he worked as a graphic artist in Lviv and was a professor of graphic art at the Ukrainian Studio of Plastic Arts in Prague (1929-45). After the Second World War he lived in London and, from 1962, Geneva. Lisovsky exhibited in Kyiv, Lviv, Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, and Rome. He was a masterful book illustrator and designer, whose expressionism incorporated traits of the Kyivan baroque in an original and modern fashion. Lisovsky, P. Kovzhun, and M. Butovych were the three most eminent Ukrainian book artists of the 1920s and 1930s. Lisovsky also designed the trident with a sword, bookplates, and O. Basarab's tombstone (1924) in Lviv and painted in watercolours and oils (flowers, landscapes, still lifes, and portraits).