On the fourth Saturday of November, Memorial Day of the Great Famine, the Holodomor in Ukraine, is observed annually. It commemorates the victims of the famine artificially caused by the Soviet authorities. According to various estimates, the famine caused the deaths of between 6 and 10 million people. This theme of famine is depicted in the woodcut 'Famine' by Zofia Nalepinska-Bojczuk, a Ukrainian artist of Polish origin.

A short biography of Zofia Nalepinska-Bojczuk
. She was born in 1884 in Łódź in the family of Aleksander, a road engineer, a well-educated man who knew several languages and was interested in culture. It was he who instilled a love of art in his daughter. Zofia's elder brother, Aleksander (1882-1968), was a PPS activist, railway engineer and promoter of sightseeing tourism, while the younger Tadeusz Jerzy (1885-1918) was a poet, prose writer and literary critic, and a soldier in Józef Piłsudski's legions. At the age of six, the family moved to St Petersburg, where his father was starting a new job.

Zofia Nalepinskaya loved drawing from childhood. She studied in the St Petersburg studio of the painter Jan Ciągliński (1858-1913), one of the precursors of Russian Impressionism. She continued her artistic education with Simon Hollósy (1857-1918), a Hungarian naturalist painter in Munich. In 1909, she went to Paris with her friend, the future well-known visual artist Sophie Baudouin de Courtenay (1887-1967). She studied at the private painting school Académie Ranson under the Nabist painters Maurice Denis (1870-1943), Félix Vallotton (1865-1925) and Paul Sérusier (1964-1927).

Paris, love and the 'boycottists '
It was in Paris that Zofia Nalepinska met Mykhailo Boychuk (1882-1937), a young but already established Ukrainian painter and mountaineer, a native of Galicia. Together with Mariusz Zaruski, he was the author of, among other things, the first winter crossing of Zawrat. Bojczuk studied, among others, at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków and in the atelier of Leon Wyczółkowski. This acquaintance was decisive for the whole future life of Zofia Nalepińska, which - until its tragic end - was inextricably linked to the outstanding Ukrainian artist.

The artist was a member of the group of "Bochukists", which was created by Mykhailo Boychuk. He postulated a revival of monumental religious, Byzantine and icon painting by turning to ancient and folk art. The group was made up of like-minded young artists, who were infected by Boychuk's love of Byzantine and Giotto art. Under his guidance, they learned tempera and frescoes.

In 1910. Zofia Nalepinskaya and Mykhailo Boychuk made an artistic trip to Italy. They visited the museums of Florence, Ravenna and Venice. They then settled in Lviv. In 1917, they moved to Kiev. They were married in a Greek Catholic church and lived in the Lukianivka district. In the memoirs of Sophia's younger sister, Anna Nalepinska-Pecharkovska: "It was a residence with a large garden and in those years of famine, fruit and vegetables helped somehow to survive... You had to pay relatively a lot for housing and it was always very difficult because there was not enough money. Besides, the house was always full of people: many of Mykhailo's students came, young and therefore always hungry [...]. Zofia used to cook big bowls of porridge, cabbage ... because they all worked at our house; I remember them making banknote designs for Petlura - for a competition'.

Zofia Nalepinska-Bojczuk's work in Soviet Ukraine
The Boychuks participated intensively in the artistic life of Soviet Ukraine, which in the 1920s was characterised by a certain independence. Mykhailo Boychuk became one of the founders of the Ukrainian Academy of Art (later the Kiev Art Institute) and head of one of the studios. He was absorbed by revolutionary ideas in art. The monumental work of the 'Boychukists', drawing on Ukrainian national traditions, was gaining increasing notoriety in Ukraine. Zofia Nalepinska-Bojchuk also initially (1918-1921) taught at the art school in Myrhorod. From 1922 to 1929 she headed the xylography (woodcut) workshop of the printing department of the Kiev Art Institute. One of her students, Vera Buroj-Macapura, recalled: "Zofia Nalepinska-Bojchuk was a teacher of great erudition. During her classes, she would squat down to her pupils with a pencil in her hands, explain and show them how to add variety to a drawing, emphasise details, achieve fluidity of line. At the same time, she always preserved the original idea of the author's composition, finding in it what was most valuable. She advised drawing the subject of the composition from real life, well known to the author".

In addition to her teaching activities, the artist was also involved in graphic art. During this period, she created numerous paintings, full of life, movement and emotion, depicting the life of the Ukrainian countryside, as well as book illustrations to the works of Taras Shevchenko (Catherine and In the Thirteenth Summer of My Life) and Nikolai Gogol. Zofia Nalepinska-Bojchuk also took part in exhibitions, including international ones in Vienna, Brussels, Florence and Stockholm. Bojczuk's pupil Vasyl Sedljar described Zofia Nalepinska's work as achieving maximum effect with minimum means. In keeping with the conventions of Soviet art, her work from the 1920s and 1930s was characterised by radical social commitment.

Woodcut "Hunger "
Under conditions of increasing ideologicalisation of art, the artist created expressive-dramatic works. One of her most shocking works is undoubtedly the woodcut "Hunger" (1927). It depicts a woman with five hungry children, two of whom have visible symptoms of hunger swelling. The space of the work is filled with pain, desperation and people trying to survive in a terrible situation. The woman in the centre of the engraving, depicted in a pose characteristic of the 'Boychukist' manner, leans over an unnaturally thin child, hands him a cup (presumably of water) and embraces him with her other arm in a gesture of protection. The horror of the atmosphere of hunger is emphasised by the empty carts, baskets and boxes. For most of Nalepinska-Bojczuk's graphic works, it is characteristic to inscribe the depicted figures in a rural or industrial landscape. In the case of the woodcut Hunger, these are railway tracks and an empty wagon.

The work was directly inspired by the artist's experience of the first famine in Ukraine in 1921-1923 - a consequence of the Bolshevik coup d'état, the devastating civil war and the communists' struggle against the wealthy peasantry.

Unlike the Holodomor of 1932-1933, the Soviet government in the early 1920s did not hide the fact of the humanitarian catastrophe. It turned to Western countries for aid, which it received, allowing it to recover from the crisis.

Socialist realism in the art of Zofia Nalepinska-Bojczuk
From the beginning of the 1930s, Zofia Nalepinska-Bojczuk limited her creative activity. Attempts to conform to the imposed, rigid rules of Socialist Realism led the artist to lose the originality and expression inherent in her works from the 1920s. The subject matter of her works also changed. She began to depict 'happy Soviet life' - the everyday life of kolkhozes, pioneers on excursions. The whole thing was crowned by a colour woodcut - a portrait of Stalin.

With the onset of the Great Terror, the 'Boychukists' became enemies for the Soviet regime, whose activities 'did not conform to the principles of proletarian art'. Mykhailo Boychuk was arrested on 25 November 1936, and on 12 June 1937 the same fate befell his wife. Zofia Nalepinska-Bojczuk was charged with 'participation in a Ukrainian national-fascist organisation and spying for foreign intelligence'. The immediate pretext for the imprisonment of both artists was their stay on a scholarship in Paris (1926-1927). It was then that Leopold Gottlieb painted a portrait of Zofia.

During the first interrogation, when asked about her nationality, Zofia Nalepinska-Bojczuk replied: "Ukrainian (parents Polish)". During the investigation, which lasted several months, she behaved valiantly. Not only did she not admit to the absurd charges against her, but she also did not give testimony incriminating any of her acquaintances. On 6 December 1937, she was sentenced to death and executed on 11 December 1937. Her husband was executed on 13 July of that year. The artist's nameless grave is to be found among the mass burials in the Bykovsky Forest near Kiev. She was only rehabilitated in December 1988. "due to the absence of a crime".