Mykola Ivanovych Tseluiko

Mykola Ivanovych Tseluiko Микола Іванович Целуйко
Born	July 3, 1937 village of Slatino, Derhachi district, Kharkiv Oblast
Died	October 31, 2007(2007-10-31) (aged 70) Kherson
Nationality	Ukraine

Mykola Ivanovych Tseluiko (Ukrainian: Микола Іванович Целуйко) was a Ukrainian painter and textile artist.

Early life

Born on July 3, 1937 in the village of Slatino, Derhachi district, Kharkiv Oblast, Tseluiko was the youngest child in the family, the third one. After his father had gone missing in the war (1944), his family moved to Lviv, where they lived on Parkova Street.

Studies

From 1959 to 1965, Mykola Tseluiko studied in the Lviv Institute of Applied and Decorative Art (Lviv State Institute of Applied and Decorative Art), specializing in artistic design of fabrics.

Career

Immediately after graduation, he was appointed to Kherson, where he continuously worked 42 years up to his death first as a fabric pattern artist and then as a leading artist at the Kherson Cotton Combine, the most powerful textile enterprise in the USSR.

He “created patterns for jacquard curtain and drapery fabrics making creative use of the Ukrainian folk art motifs and sketches from nature”, says the Dictionary of Ukrainian Artists. Production application of patterns was possible only after they have been reviewed and approved by the artistic council first in Kiev in the Ukrainian Institute of Light Industry and then in Moscow in the All-Union Institute of Light Industry. Such reviews took place three times per year. During the time of his work at the Kherson Cotton Combine, Mykola Tseluiko created hundreds of square meters of sketches; hundreds of thousands of square meters of fabrics were made according to them.

Mykola Tseluiko combined his work at the Kherson Cotton Combine with teaching: he was pregraduation practice supervisor for students in the Lviv State Institute of Applied and Decorative Art; in the second half of the 1990s, he was the chief lecturer of Weaving and Design Department at the Kherson State Technological University. He taught Basics of Composition and Drawing and Textile Products Design.

Exhibitions and awards

• 1968 — 2nd Exhibition of Cotton Combine Artists, Kherson, Culture Palace for Textile Industry Workers.
• 1974 — 3d Republican Exhibition of Watercolor, Kiev.
• 1975 — Republican Exhibition New Samples of Folk Decorative Art for Mass and Serial Production, Kiev.
• 1977 — International Industrial Exhibition of Fabrics, Leipzig (German Democratic Republic).
• 1978 — Honorary diploma of the Ministry of Light Industry of the USSR.
• 1981 — International Industrial Exhibition of Fabrics, Brno, (Czechoslovakia).
• 1981 — 1st prize at the Republican Competition Dedicated to Kiev's 1500th Anniversary.
• 1987 — International exhibitions of textile products in Czechoslovakia, Libya, and France.
• 1987 — Anniversary personal exhibition, Kherson, Kherson Cotton Combine.
• 1997 — Anniversary personal exhibition, Kherson, Kherson Cotton Combine.
• 1999 — All-Ukrainian Exhibition of Amateur Pictorial Art, Kiev, Ukrainian House.

Mykola Tseluiko was a member, permanent participant, and winner of competitions held by the Textile Industry Scientific and Technical Community. He was among those who initiated the development of sport souvenirs for the World Student Games and the Olympic Games in Moscow in 1980.

Publications

• Ukrainian Art Studies-Kiev: Naukova Dumka, 1968.— p. 115, 117.
• Modern Ukrainian Artists- Kiev: Naukova Dumka, 1985.— p. 29, 51.

In the 1960–1980s, production facilities of the Kherson Cotton Combine were very large: the combine’s products covered the requirements of the considerable part of the country. Mykola Tseluiko used to joke that whatever city or village he came to there was always an exhibition of his works there.

Style

Mykola Tseluiko painted with tempera and water-color on paper. Most his works were painted from nature: he took a sketchbox, a board, and papersheets and went sketching. He painted in a very quick manner at one scoop. He often went to creative duty trips: he was in Crimea (Sudak, Feodosia), Carpathian Mountains (Yaremche, Rachiv), Sedniv of Chernigiv region, Caucasus (Baku, Sukhumi), Central Asia (Samarkand, Bukhara), Baltics (Tallinn), Moldova (Strasheny, Soroky), Russia (Suzdal, Totma). He used to return with new impressions and works.

Artistic heritage

Mykola Tseluiko’s creative heritage is not limited to his works as a textile artist only. All his life he gathered ethnographic materials subsequently used by him in fabric patterns development; weaved thematic Gobelins, particularly handmade carpets Tavrian Legend (1968), Flaming Years (1970), and decorative panel Musician (1969) mentioned in the Dictionary of Ukrainian Artists; painted pictures and drew sketches.

Mykola Tseluiko died on October 31, 2007. He is buried in Kherson.

References

Persondata
Name	Tseluiko, Mykola
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	July 3, 1937
Place of birth	village of Slatino, Derhachi district, Kharkiv Oblast
Date of death	October 31, 2007
Place of death	Kherson