Jacques Hnizdovsky II

 

Jacques Hnizdovsky was born on January 27, 1915 in Ternopil Oblast, Ukraine, Hnizdovsky, a member of a noble family. They were forced to flee to Poland during the 1917 Russian Revolution, and thus he went on to study at both the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Poland and the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, Croatia before immigrating to the United States in 1949, settling in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

He created illustrations for a number of books, including The Poems of John Keats (1964), Tree Trail of Central Park (1971), and Flora Exotica (1972). These illustrations are all from 'Ukranian Folk Tales', translated by Marie Halun Bloch and illustrated with woodcut prints by Jacques Hnizdovsky, published in 1964. 

Jacques Hnizdovsky I

Jacques Hnizdovsky's 1915- 1985 was aUkrainian artist whose work has an incredible order and symmetry. He worked mainly in woodcuts, but did use other mediums. 

" One day, on a train, I watched the forest approach the train, then race alongside it in an exhausting dash. I examined the order of the trees which, under the effect of movement, changed their arrangement and shape in an orderly manner. I thought to myself that if one could explore this order, one could reproduce the image of movement ."

In the summer of 1949, like thousands of Ukrainians in those post-war years scattered throughout Europe and unwilling to return to Soviet Ukraine, the artist left for the United States of America: 

" It became irrelevant to me where I live. I learned to have no more desires ."

"Freedom has no insurance policy."