Heaven on earth. Collection of Ukrainian folk icons collected by Ivan Honchar

From the 16th century, powerful craft centers of icon painting were formed in Ukraine — in Volyn, Kyiv, Lviv, Przemyśl, Pidlyash and other cities, which worked for churches and monasteries. These images also decorated the estates of the nobility.

The represented samples of folk icon painting belong to both church and household use. They were written on wood, canvas, glass and factory glass in the period from the end of the 17th to the middle of the 20th century.

The inability of the church to meet the popular demand for an icon contributed to the development of the folk craft of icon painting. The artistic component of folk icon painting was formed in the same vein as decorative painting, which is characterized by brevity, bright open colors, rhythmic compositions, plasticity of lines, sometimes whimsical forms and bizarre expression characteristic of naive art.

Icons were the embodiment of sincere religiosity of Ukrainians. One lord could count more than a dozen icons of saints revered by the people. It was a kind of home iconostasis. The plot series of icons was dictated by the popular religious worldview, formed by both Christian and pagan traditions. The icon played the role of a kind of talisman against all kinds of troubles and misfortunes. The Mother of God is the patroness of the poor, Nicholas the Wonderworker is the patron of travelers, sailors and fishermen. George the Winner is an animal protector.

Saints on icons were considered "living gods" who watch over people's lives. In cosmogonic carols and proverbs, God and the saints are close to earthly life:
"... Saint Peter chases the wolf,
Jesus Christ himself follows the plow
The Mother of God wears food..."

Saint images were perceived by people as close and dear to them, because the people of God, as they were sometimes called, introduced the features of their relatives and fellow villagers into them, transforming canonical images into folk images: "...I will draw my mother on the shrine in the house, I will look at the shrine - I will remember my mother..."

Folk painters also painted icons of a symbolic and allegorical nature: "The Restless Eye", "Christ the Vine", which can be considered as a kind of echo of the Baroque era.

Artistic solutions of folk icons have certain regional trends. So, the icons of the 19th century from the crafts workshops of Kurenivka on Podil in Kyiv, painted on wood, small in size, with floral decoration.

The icons of Chernihiv Oblast are larger, made mainly in "sunny" shades of yellow, red and orange colors with floral ornamentation, which in some samples imitates levkas carving.

The icons of Pokuttia and Hutsulshchyna made on thick glass, as well as multi-figured icons on wood from Bukovyna are peculiar in style, in the linear means of artistic expression of which a connection with church engraving and religious painting on glass of Romania, Slovakia, and Poland can be traced.

A certain artistic integrity is made up of the multipart icons on the canvas of Cherkassy and Eastern Podillia, which are partially Latinized, written with a tendency towards psychologism and realism.

Ukrainian folk icons are a bright page of Ukrainian folk painting that appeared in many traditions of the past. Mythopoetic, religious ideas of the people, national values and ideals were reflected in it.