Tymko Boichuk (27.09.1896 – 13.07.1922) was a Ukrainian artist who worked in the fields of monumentalism, easel painting, and book graphics. Tymko was the younger brother and follower of Mykhailo Boichuk, the founder of Boichukism — an art school and modernist movement that encompassed various artistic fields and aimed to integrate art into everyday life. Starting from the 1910s, the Boichukists forged a new Ukrainian style by synthesizing modern trends with the heritage of Byzantium, Kyivan Rus’, and Ukrainian folk art.
The painting "Near the Apple Tree" (1919–1920) is referred to as an icon of Ukrainian modernism. It combines the religious and the national, the mythopoetic and the everyday, elements of Byzantine, classical, and contemporary painting. It is one of the few surviving paintings by Tymko Boichuk. The artist died of tuberculosis at the age of 25, and most of his works disappeared later during the Soviet repression against Boichukism in the 1930s, when Mykhailo Boichuk and other Boichukists were executed, and almost their entire artistic legacy was destroyed. The painting "Near the Apple Tree" is held at the National Art Museum of Ukraine. Art critics still differ in their interpretation of the meanings embedded in the painting. You too can try to find an answer as you put together this puzzle.
