Great Personalities

Litovchenko Ekaterina- “The Ukrainian Madonna”

Project made by Prevysokov Ilya Elena Kirzhner

Form 10-CGymnasium 9

Simferopol 2012

CoordinatorLyudmila Katsura

teacher-methodologist

Litovchenko Ekaterina Ivanovna was born on December 14, 1948 in Sverdlovsk, Lugansk region. She grew up in a large family. She had two sisters and four brothers. When Kate was three years old, her mother died. Her father tried to do everything possible his children did not feel orphaned. The girl wanted to join the amateur circus.

Since the age of 12 small Kate Litovchenko has started practising aerial acrobatics. At the age of 14 she was an amateur acrobat and a member of a circus collective body. They performed on the arenas of Lugansk, Kiev, and Moscow. Kate wished she were a professional acrobat. Kate finished ten classes. After that she entered a trade school, but felt that it was not her cup of tea. She had to combine work and performances. But a fatal tragedy happened to a young talented and budding acrobat.

On June 1, 1968 she got a trauma of a backbone during her training on a trampoline. The diagnosis of the doctors was a verdict, which had damaged all her life - "a cord injury with damaged the fourth and the fifth cervical vertebrae, paralysis of both the arms and legs, complete immobility for a lifetime."

The applauses, a bright spotlight, the arena, the doors of the circus were closed to the girl forever. She stayed bedridden with her illness face to face. It is very important to have a number of people who can support and love you. Kate’s sister, Irina, left school in another town, but she almost immediately returned to Sverdlovsk and since that moment she had been never leaving her. She dedicated all her life to Kate.She had been looking after for her sister Kate, who has been motionless for 44 years.

After having heard these creepy words of the doctors, Ekaterina Litovchenko has been in a daze for a long time. And then in the sanatorium "Slavic” for disabled people Kate read a book by our countryman, Vladislav Titov, "Defying Death ". In 1960 he became involved in a serious accident. A loaded coal carriage derailed, hit a high-voltage cable, and short-circuited it.

The resulting fire ran along the cable to the power transformer and would have caused an explosion, burying alive the entire shift of miners. Hoping to save his co-workers, Titov rushed to the transformer and managed to shut it down, but by doing so he exposed himself to high voltage. Doctors saved his life and an injured leg, but both his arms had to be amputated up to the shoulders.

He manages not only to recover his mental balance but also begins to help others cope with their psychological problems."It was a desire to sleep and never wake up, but after having read this book, I thought and decided not to submit to the diagnosis of my disease and to show who's the boss" - Ekaterina Litovchenko said.

When she returned home, she received her friends’ first letters from the sanatorium. And there was one question - how to respond the letter? "I took a pencil, clutched it with my teeth and began trying to write" – Kate said. Now she can write poems and play chess well.

The artist draws the pictures using only coloured pencils, pens and ballpoint pens. To draw using watercolor or gouache is very uncomfortable because of the technology. The basic subjects of her art are landscapes. Kate admits that all of her landscapes are the result of what she had seen on TV or what could be seen out of the windows of the ambulance, on the way to the resort: it is only one way to see the nature. The trip lasts for 250 miles.

Paintings are born on a drawing paper. Each job takes three weeks. Ekaterina Litovchenko created more than 400 works. She draws from the illustrations of books, sketches, postcards and photographs. Her eyes see only the beautiful places in the resort town of Slavyansk, which happens once a year.

From year to year, she has been mastering her skills. Her paintings have been seen on local and regional exhibitions. In November1996 her works were shown in Kiev. The same year, Ekaterina Litovchenko was honoured the title of the Merited Artist of Ukraine. Pictures of Ekaterina Litovchenko are well known in Belgium, England, Austria, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. In the Netherlands her four works had been taken to one of the galleries on the permanent exhibition. In 2003 Benevolence International Foundation "St. Mary" awarded Ekaterina Ivanovna the honourary title of "The Ukrainian Madonna."

We have chosen Ekaterina Ivanovna Litovchenko out of many famous people of Ukraine as a great personality. We think she has made a great contribution to society and try to prove it with some facts from her life.

Nickolay Ostrovsky wrote such words in his novel “How the Steel was Tempered”: “Live even if your life becomes unbearable”.

An excellent example which proves the truth of these words is the life of Ekaterina Litovchenko. She has been bedridden for 44 years but she didn’t give in. She paints superb pictures. It is impossible to view her works without great admiration.

She did succeed in the world of drawing. In 1996 she turned into celebrity. Ekaterina Litovchenko was a courageous woman who wasn’t afraid of difficulties. She endured them successfully. Not every man is capable of doing such things. She proved to be a woman of a strong character.

Ekaterina Litovchenko is really a woman of great courage. We kneel

before her. She is motionless but produces great art. Her pictures are vivid and water seems alive. You see the splashes of it and just want to swim in the lake. She was rightly called the “Ukrainian Madonna”. She teaches us to overcome all the difficulties and troubles in life.

We’d like to stress that life is given but once. You should live it in the way you wouldn’t be ashamed for the years you had lived in vain. And dying you could say that all the life and all the strengths were given to the most wonderful thing in the world, that is the struggle for the life and making this world a better place.

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