The Maria Prymachenko Museum in Ivankiv, Vyshgorod District, Kyiv Oblast, was damaged on the third day of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation. The wooden building burst into flames instantly after being hit by four rockets. In total, 410 exhibits were stored in the museum. Some of the early works of the artist Maria Prymachenko burned completely, and some were damaged. They didn't have time to pull four plates out of the flames - Maria Prymachenko's first works, textiles, pre-revolutionary towels, home-woven carpets, 200-year-old interior items. 

Maria Prymachenko was born on January 12, 1909, in the village of Bolotnia, where she lived all her life until  August 18, 1997. Ukrainian folk artist in the genre of "naive art"; the author of more than 800 paintings, 650 of which are kept in the National Museum of Ukrainian Folk Decorative Art (Kyiv).

In 1936, at the 1st Republican Exhibition of Folk Art, exhibited in Moscow, Leningrad, and Warsaw, Prymachenko's paintings occupied an entire hall. For his participation, Primachenko was awarded a first degree diploma. Since then, her works have been exhibited with consistent success in Paris, Warsaw, Sofia, Montreal, and Prague. In 1937, the artist's works were exhibited in Paris.

Synthesizing the experience of generations, Prymachenko's style goes back genealogically to the most ancient art: Paleolithic "two-part" depiction of animals with a defined boundary of the head and body, pagan images of fantastic monsters and birds reflected in Slavic mythology. She develops traditional symbols of folk art and fills them with new meaning.

Synthesizing the experience of generations, Prymachenko's style goes back genealogically to the most ancient art: Paleolithic "two-part" depiction of animals with a defined boundary of the head and body, pagan images of fantastic monsters and birds reflected in Slavic mythology. She develops traditional symbols of folk art and fills them with new meaning.

Prymachenko combined drawing and painting: it is pictorial graphics and graphic painting at the same time. Color is the main component of Prymachenko's compositions. It organizes the plane, is an element of rhythm, creates the mood of a "colorful" space, as if it chooses the form itself.

Prymachenko did not like large monotonous planes, considering them lifeless, so the background is everywhere covered with rhythmic rows of small lines, brackets, dots, light (clouds in the sky) and dark (waves, grass on the ground and water). This is an alternation of forms and colors, a calm ornamental movement is repeated in every piece of work.

"Animal series" is a unique phenomenon in domestic and world art. Fiction works have something in common with folk pictures, but fantastic beasts are a pure creation of imagination. Enlarged forms of unseen animals, a shower of colors in combination with the ornamental design of the body create emotionally powerful images that seem to move, breathe, and grow before your eyes.

In Prymachenko's fantastic compositions, folk fiction is the leading genre, embodying ethical categories and a philosophy of life affirmation. The main theme of her work is the universal theme of the struggle between good and evil. Good birds and animals are painted in bright, shining colors, evil ones are dark, muted, approaching folk painting and poetry. Good and evil are depicted in an organic right-handed interaction, like the plant and animal world.

In 1986, she created the "Chernobyl" series (Bolotnia is located in an almost 30-kilometer zone).

On May 5, 2022, the charity auction for the sale of Maria Prymachenko's painting "Flowers grew around the fourth block" created in 1990 ended, at which it was sold for $500,000 at the starting price of $5,000. The auction was organized by the Serhiy Prytula Charitable Foundation with the help of the "Dukat" auction house from April 29 to May 5.The proceeds went to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine — they bought 125 Volkswagen T5 minibuses for the front line.

The picture was dedicated to the fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (ChNPP), where the tragedy occurred in 1986. Prytula said that there is a certain symbolism in this, since the Russian military dug trenches in the Rudy lisibile of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and also bombed the museum with the works of Primachenko in Ivankovo, so now her work will help bomb them.

The painting was purchased by a Ukrainian living abroad and handed over to the National Art Museum for safekeeping.