Background
Krychevsky was born in Lebedyn to the family of a Jewish country doctor who converted to Orthodox Chritianity and married a Ukrainian woman.
Krychevsky was born in Lebedyn to the family of a Jewish country doctor who converted to Orthodox Chritianity and married a Ukrainian woman.
He graduated from the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in 1901 and the Saint St. Petersburg Academy of Arts in 1910. He traveled in Western Europe for a year, and studied briefly with Gustav Klimt in Vienna.
He was the brother of graphic designer Vasyl Krychevsky. He moved to Kiev, where he served as professor and director at the Kiev Art School from 1914-1918. In 1917, he was one of the founders and a rector (from 1920-1922) of the Ukrainian State Academy of Arts.
When the academy was abolished, he worked as a professor at the Kiev State Art Institute, eventually becoming its rector.
He remained in Kiev at the onset of the Second World War, and kept his position at the Institute, trying to save it in difficult conditions during the German occupation of Kiev. He served as the chairman of the Union of Ukrainian Artists that tried to improve the conditions of artists during the occupation.
He was extremely popular among the artist-colleagues, faculty at the institute and the students, and no one betrayed his Jewish origins to the German authorities, saving him from the Babi Yar massacre. He attempted to flee west to escape the advancing Soviet troops, but the train in which he was traveling was overtaken.
Krychevsky was arrested by the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs as a collaborator, but his interrogations have elicited nothing that could incriminate him, so he was stripped of all his titles and honors and sent to internal exile to the village of Irpin near Kiev where he died of starvation during the famine in 1947, despite the food help that was receiving from his student Tetyana Yablonska.
Krychevsky had many students throughout his long career, notably Boris Kriukow, Tetyana Yablonska. There is a street in Kiev named in his honor.
Krychevsky was known as a prolific artist, who produced close to a thousand works (compositions, portraits, landscapes, sketches and studies). His work Life: Triptych (Love, Family, and Return) was highly praised at the Venice Biennale in 1928.
He was one of the founders of the National Academy of Visual Arts and Architecture.
There is a street in Kiev named in Fedir's honor.
