Liudmyia Morozova (1907, Kyiv, Ukraine–1997, Hunter, NY, USA),
began her study of art by taking private lessons from the noted
Ukrainian artist Anna Krueger-Prakhova. Her education continued at the
Kyiv School of Art and Industry in 1925–27 and at the Kyiv Art
Institute in 1928–31. Among Morozova’s teachers were renowned artists
and educators Mykhailo Kozyk, Yukhym Mykhailiv, Kostiantyn Yeleva, and
the brothers Vasyl and Fedir Krychevsky. It was Fedir Krychevsky in
particular, that exercised the greatest influence in the shaping of
Morozova’s personal creative style. Krychevsky treated his students
with the utmost respect towards of their original talent and strong
personality. He possessed the essential qualities of a great master
and teacher who recognized the importance of nurturing the students’
individual artistic approach. It is rumored that Fedir Krychevsky was
in love with his strongest student, Liudmila Morozova, a beautiful
young woman, with bright blue eyes and luxurious blonde braids. A
portrait of Morozova painted by Krychevsky was purchased by the
Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.
Liudmila Morozova’s early
works reflect her refined degree of the impressionist style. Her
extraordinary talent and innovative approach to painting were quickly
recognized. Morozova captured the admiration of the public with her
first solo exhibition held in Kyiv in 1935. In 1936 Morozova, together
with Prof. Ipolyt Morgilevsky, a renowned architecture historian,
participated in the salvation of the mosaics, frescoes, and icons from
the Cathedral of St. Michael of the Golden Domes, a priceless cultural
treasure dating from the twelfth century that was destroyed by the
Bolsheviks. In 1937–38 she took part in an archeological expedition led
by Prof. Morgilevsky, in Svanetia, a mountainous region in Georgia.
Morozova was a daughter of a Baltic German from Riga. Her family was
close to Hetman Petro Skoropadsky, a conservative head of independent
Ukrainian state in 1918, and as a result, Morozova suffered
persecution by Soviet authorities in the 1930s and was forced to leave
Ukraine. In 1944, she undertook a perilous journey to the West, through
Berlin, Dresden, where a large portion of her private collection
perished during the bombing. After, Dresden Morozova went to Karlovy
Vary, and Pilsen, and found herself in camps for displaced persons run
by the Western allies in Aschaffenburg and Berchtesgaden. As a postwar
refugee, Morozova arrived in the United States in 1951, settling in New
York, and became a member of the American Artists Professional League.
For twenty-five years, she taught painting at the Queensboro Art
Society in Queens, NY. In the late 1970s, she moved permanently to
Hunter, NY, where she purchased a house in 1961 and organized her
studio. Morozova was very fond of the culture and landscape of Greece,
where she spent extensive creative sojourns in 1965–66, 1976–77,
1984–85, and 1987–88. In addition to her artistic efforts she was noted
for her close friendships with prominent representatives of Ukrainian
and Russian émigré circles, such as the historian Natalia
Polonska-Vasylenko and R. Repin, the grandson of the famous Russian
artist.
Liudmila Morozova worked primarily in oils and
was a traditional impressionist, painting the air in her landscapes,
the sun on her models, and the scent of her flowers. In the final
decades of her life she focused her painting efforts on landscapes
depicting Greece and the Woodstock area in upstate New York; she was a
prominent member of the Woodstock area artist community. In accordance
with her final wishes, she was buried in Kyiv, the city of her birth.
The
works of Liudmila Morozova are held in the collections of the National
Museum of Arts of Ukraine, the Museum of the City of Kyiv, and in
museums and private collections in the United States, Britain, Canada,
Greece, Germany, Austria, France, and Australia.