Tavrian painting came into contemporary art from the exteriors of folk dwellings on Kinburn. Women usually simply smeared the walls of a house with clay, while the mazalnytsi-painters also decorated them with protective symbols. The only surname that has reached our time thanks to Yevhenia Bondarenko is Maria Knyha. It was she who taught the future artist the basic strokes of the painting. But Bondarenko went further and carried it into easel painting, joining ornaments organically with subjects from folk tales and legends. Through masterclasses at the Mykolaiv Institute of Postgraduate Pedagogical Education, Yevhenia Bondarenko awakened a love of the painting in preschool teachers, among them Olena Borozdina, Aryna Yakovleva, Oksana Lysianska and others. Unfortunately, a wider and fitting interest, and an answering in people’s souls, “Tavryka” did not then find.

House painting in the picture by Bondarenko Yevhenia Easter in Tavria, 2000

New breath was given to Tavrian painting by Liubov Paraniuk. More than fifteen years ago she began a search for knowledge of the painting, studied and worked through its strokes, motifs and ornaments, and carried them onto new, contemporary materials. Her first pupils were students of the Kutsurub School of Arts; one of them was the young artist Anna Zhoss.

Liubov Paraniuk — leading master of Tavrian painting

The further forming of a constellation of bearers of Tavrian painting took place in cooperation with the researcher Ruslana Sikalenko.

Courses in the regional painting organised at the Public Organisation “Adult Learning and Education Center ‘South’,” masterclasses, the issue of educational and methodological handbooks, and participation in scholarly and public-awareness events helped the number of people in love with “Tavryka” and motivated to keep it to grow. Striking are the ornamental compositions of Lesia Saikovska, Aleksandra Udovytska, Nataliia Akulenko and Anna Salnyk, and the narrative pictures of Svitlana Boikova-Kaliuzhna, Oksana Davydova and other masters who keep the traditions of the Mykolaiv Region. In the last five years alone, PO “ALEC ‘South’” has graduated 17 groups of bearers of the painting.

Masters of the NGO “Cultural and Artistic Association ‘Art-Temptation’” and of PO “ALEC ‘South’” at the exhibition “Tavrian Painting in the Context of the War,” 2024

In the summer of 2025 more than 70 masters supported the initiative to include Tavrian painting as the tradition and practice of spatial and utilitarian decoration in the Mykolaiv Region in the National List of Elements of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Ukraine, thanks to which it received the protection number 116 n.k.s. More than 200 people took part in the preliminary questionnaire.

Interest in the study of Tavrian painting is only growing now, for it wins more and more hearts and fills spaces — in educational institutions, administrative buildings and beyond.

Saikovska L., Paraniuk L., Boikova-Kaliuzhna S. and Davydova O. at the festival “The Blue-Eyed Pearl of the Mykolaiv Region,” 2025