Kakhovka dam explosion leaves museum and home of Ukrainian painter Polina Raiko in danger of flooding
The house of Ukrainian painter Polina Raiko in the city of Oleshky (Kherson Oblast), which is also a museum of her work, is under threat of flooding after Russian occupation forces blew up the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant (HPP). Source: Suspilne Kultura (Culture), citing Semen Khramtsov, a painter and a representative of the Polina Raiko Kherson Oblast Charitable Foundation Quote from Khramtsov: "If the water comes, there is a large risk that the house will collapse, since it's located close to the water on Nyzhnia Street.
Even if the water doesn't flood the entire building but erodes its foundation, [the museum] will suffer." Details: Khramtsov noted that as of now, the situation in the vicinity of the building is not yet critical, though the part of the street further away from the museum has been flooded.
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Paintings in Polina Raiko's house.Photo: Polina Raiko Charitable Foundation
Polina Raiko is a self-taught Ukrainian naive painter.
She was born in Oleshky in 1928. At age 69, she took up painting, without having ever trained in it. Her first painting depicted a white dove on a branch.
Several years later, she painted her entire house, her summer kitchen, the gate to her house, the fence around it, and the garage doors, as well as her relatives' graves at the cemetery.
Polina Raiko. Photo: Polina Raiko Charitable Foundation
Raiko died on 15 January 2004. A couple of art lovers from Canada bought her house after her death.
A Polina Raiko Charitable Foundation was created later to promote her art and fundraise. In 2013, the Kyiv-based Ivan Honchar Museum organised a trip to Polina Raiko's house in Kherson Oblast, and said it was prepared to take care of it. Raiko's house is currently protected by a Ukrainian law on the protection of cultural heritage.
Her art is deemed to be on par with that of celebrated Ukrainian artists Mariia Prymachenko and Kateryna Bilokur.
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White dove. Photo: Polina Raiko Charitable Foundation
Ukrainska Pravda Kultura (Culture) earlier reported that the flooding unleashed by the blowing up of the Kakhovka HPP has already caused irreparable damage to unique cultural monuments and to the Nyzhniodniprovskyi (Lower Dnipro) National Nature Park, and many valuable sites such as Scythian and Cossack kurgans (burial mounds) are in danger.
Dr Svitlana Biliaieva, a historian who led research into the Tiahynka fortress, a unique 14-15th-century architectural monument located in the village of Tiahynka, Beryslavskyi district, in Kherson Oblast, said that the fortress has been flooded.
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