Ukrainian Scholars on Tomasz Oskar Sosnowski, the Son of the Volhynia Region
Ukrainian Scholars on Tomasz Oskar Sosnowski, the Son of the Volhynia Region

Summary/Abstract: The sculptural works of Tomasz Oskar Sosnowski (1812-1886), a Polish art-ist born in Novomalyn in Volhynia (modern Ukraine), have been of no interest to both Ukrainian historians and art historians for a long time. The fi rst scholarly and pop-ular articles concerning the artist were published as recently as the 1990s by Yaro-slava Bondarchuk. However, neither she nor other researchers knew Sosnowski’s date of birth. In 2012, Mykola Bendiuk, based on Igor Teslenko’s discovery, published a book-let claiming the date of birth was December 1812. However, Bendiuk’s disclosure con-tains a whole series of inaccuracies and factual errors caused by its author’s overly liberal interpretation of unverifi ed information. On the other hand, in 2015 and 2022 Valery Vojtovych, a painter and writer, self-published two editions of his book on Sos-nowski. These are the fi rst such comprehensive and signifi cant books in Ukrainian ded-icated entirely to the artist. Unfortunately, these (especially the fi rst) are characterized by extreme nationalism, while the factual and interpretative contents are more than unreliable and misleading to the reader. Nevertheless, the fi rst step has been taken, and perhaps soon Ukrainian authors will be encouraged to become more objective when writing about Polish artists born on the territory of present-day Ukraine.

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