5
Unfortunately, overwork, hardship and
near-starvation undermined his health, with
typhus the victor. How prophetic that he had
drawn a bird-like creature earlier, named it
typhus and predicted that he that he would die
the disease. He succumbed in Kyiv on March 9,
1922, at the age of 29.
Such ambiguous, individualistic works by
a devout believer would not have survived the
crackdown on Ukrainian nationalist sympathies
which began in the early 1930's and all work by
Piskorsky was hidden by his family for many
years. That which was in institutions, the
Museum of Ukrainian Art and the Central
State Archive of Literature, which houses the
majority of his work, was saved, as was the work
of his contemporaries, Bohomazov and Palmov,
by Dmitro Horbachev.
"Piskorsky is probably one of those
people who attract their own Fate, and
in general it is difficult to imagine him
alive and active in the heyday of the
Soviet era."
John Bowlt
