Zinovii Shenderovych Tolkachov is a Ukrainian painter and graphic artist, as well as a representative of the monumental art genre. He was born in a jewish agricultural colony of the Schedrin Bobruisk county in the Minsk province on the 12th (25th) of February, 1903.
In years 1909-1919 he studied art at the crafts department of the Kyiv public Jewish school, and went to an art school afterwards. Due to financial difficulties in his family, Tolkachov had left the school and became an apprentice of a painter who made signboards. Later he began to paint movie posters while being employed at a “painting guild”, a co-operative craft society of artists led by Mann.
In 1919–1920 he was a student at the Higher Art and Technical Studios in Moscow. At the end of 1920’s, he continued his education at the Kyiv Art Institute, in the class led by Fedir Krychevskyi. Zinovii Tolkachov is one of the pioneers of Ukrainian Soviet visual art and a true maestro of easel painting and book graphics. Political posters and caricatures can also be found among his earlier works, however Tolkachov’s true calling was monumental art and painting.
Zinovii Tolkachov had already been famous as an artist when he was called up for military service. During the years of World War II he created the series of works called “Invaders”, “Maidanek”, “Christ at Maidanek”. In 1944, an exhibition of his works was opened in Lublin, Poland. The next year, 1945 Tolkachov had created his “Auschwitz”, and “Flowers of Auschwitz” albums, to the last of which he returned to after the war, creating additional works, during 1961-1963. Several drawings included in the “Auschwitz” album were created on blank forms from the concentration camp, because there was no other paper available. In the margins of these black and white sketches, Tolkachov wrote down the stories of some of the survivors. In the post-war years the painter had created a series of portraits of his contemporaries, foremostly artists, too. He also made illustrations to literary works of writers like Sholem Aleichem (“The Town” series), Yitskhok Leybush Peretz, Bertolt Brecht (“Mother Courage and Her Children), and others.
Zinovii Tolkachov died on August 30, 1977 in Kyiv.
