1886–1920
Heorhii Narbut
Graphic artist behind the 1918 hryvnia
The hryvnia notes of 1918, postage stamps and the Hetmanate’s state seal were all drawn by one artist. Heorhii Narbut was a graphic artist, author of the Ukrainian Alphabet and a founder of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts. He died of typhus in 1920, aged 34.
Key accomplishments
- Designs for 12 issues of money and securities in 1918–1920: notes of 100 karbovantsi and 10, 100 and 500 hryvnias, postage stamps and bonds
- The small state seal of the Ukrainian State, approved by Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi in July 1918
- The Ukrainian Alphabet (1917, 1919), one of the high points of Ukrainian graphic art
- A founder, professor and rector of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts
- Illustrations for The Arms of the Hetmans of Little Russia (1915) and for Krylov’s fables
A boy from a Cossack homestead
Heorhii Narbut was born in 1886 at the Narbutivka homestead near Hlukhiv, into a family descended from the old Cossack officer class. He learned to draw mostly on his own. As a gymnasium student in Hlukhiv he was already studying Ukrainian antiquities, and in 1904 he showed his drawings for the first time at a district exhibition.
Books in St Petersburg
In 1906 Narbut moved to St Petersburg. There he worked in the studios of Mstislav Dobuzhinsky and Ivan Bilibin, and in 1909 he studied in Munich, where he pored over old engravings, Dürer’s among them. His drawings decorated Andersen’s fairy tales, Krylov’s fables and books on old Ukrainian coats of arms. Even from St Petersburg he went back to the Hlukhiv area almost every summer to look for old monuments.
How to draw a state
In the spring of 1917 Narbut returned to Kyiv. He became one of the organizers and a professor of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts, and in 1918 its rector. Together with Mykhailo Boichuk and Vasyl Krychevskyi, he is credited with shaping the style of Ukrainian art in the 1920s and 1930s. He drafted designs for the state coat of arms and seal, and in July 1918 Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi approved his small state seal: a Cossack with a musket on his shoulder, with the trident above. Twelve issues of money and securities were printed to Narbut’s designs in 1918–1920: notes of 100 karbovantsi and 10, 100 and 500 hryvnias, postage stamps and bonds. Among his other designs were stamps with portraits of Hryhorii Skovoroda and Hetman Petro Doroshenko.
An alphabet and an unfinished Aeneid
Narbut’s best-known book is the Ukrainian Alphabet (1917, 1919), considered a masterpiece of Ukrainian graphic art. In 1919 he began illustrating Ivan Kotliarevskyi’s Eneida but did not live to finish it. Narbut died of typhus in Kyiv on 23 May 1920 and was buried at the Baikove Cemetery.
Why it matters today
Heorhii Narbut gave the young Ukrainian state its face: the money, stamps and seal by which people knew it. Today those banknotes and seals are symbols of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917–1921. With Mykhailo Boichuk and Vasyl Krychevskyi he is credited with shaping Ukrainian art of the 1920s and 1930s, so his influence outlived both him and that state. He lived only 34 years, yet he showed that independence needs more than an army and laws: it needs a look of its own, and an artist can help build a state.
