Polina Rajko was born in 1928 and led a really difficult life. When she was still a child, she survived exile to Germany during the Second World War. After returning to Ukraine in 1950, at the age of 22, she married Mykola Oleksijowicz Rajko. A year later their daughter Olena was born, and two years later their son Serhiy was born. The whole family lived thanks to growing their own fruit and vegetables, as well as performing seasonal work in a kolkhoz located in Aleszki. They built themselves a house near the Kinskaya River – the left tributary of the Dnieper.
She began painting at the age of 69, and her house was declared a national heritage
Polina’s husband and son abused alcohol. Serhiy even went to prison for three years after nearly destroying and robbing his family home, even robbing the electrical system. After he was released, he stabbed his mother with a knife. In 1994, tragedy struck and Elena died in a car accident. A year later, Mykola died, and Polina was left alone with her son. Not for long, however, because in 1997 he was sent to a penal colony. And in 2002 he died of cirrhosis of the liver.
In the fall of 1998, Polina was 69 years old and began to paint her house. She treated this occupation as a form of therapy to help her work through the trauma. “Either way, the walls had to be painted,” she recalled, and her words are reported by the Moje Miasto profile. “I thought I’d try to draw something that would lighten my soul. To keep from crying, I started singing. I’m standing on the table, drawing and singing: the house is empty. The neighbors thought I was crazy, but many people liked the drawings.”
Polina used almost all of her small pension to buy paints and brushes. She decorated subsequent rooms with vivid colors with images of various animals, birds, plants, people and angels. Step by step, wall by wall, Polina managed to paint the entire property – including the ceilings. The house quickly became a local tourist attraction. After the tourists came art historians and later ethnographers. Since Polina had no artistic education, researchers consider her to be an outstanding representative of the trend of folk and naive art.
In 2005, the artistic group “Totem” and ethnographers prepared a catalog with the works of Polina, who died in 2004 in her hometown. In 2006, Nadzieja Koszman made a documentary about the artist’s art, Rajko, and the property itself was sold by Rajko’s grandson to a wealthy Canadian. The house was also protected under the Cultural Heritage Act – Polina’s paintings were recognized as a monument of Ukrainian national culture. In 2022, during the Russian invasion, the artist’s house became a symbol of Ukrainian resistance in Kherson. Unfortunately, the property was almost completely destroyed after the Russians blew up the Kakhovskaya Hydroelectric Power Plant.
Source: Gazeta
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