Opanas Slastion

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Opanas Heorhiiovych Slastion (December 2, 1855 – September 24, 1933) was a Ukrainian graphic artist, painter, ethnographer, and teacher. He was born in Berdiansk, in what is now Ukraine, and studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, where he was also known as Afanasy Slastyon. He later taught at the Arts and Crafts School in Myrhorod.

Slastion was talented in many fields: singing, playing the bandura, ethnography, journalism, education, design, and architecture. He helped popularize Ukrainian kobzar art, the tradition of bard music. He is known for illustrating Taras Shevchenko’s Kobzar and for painting scenes of Cossacks and village life. He promoted kobzar performance and was one of the first widely recognized bandura players and teachers. Kobzar Ivan Kuchuhura-Kucherenko studied with him in Myrhorod, and Danylo Pika learned the bandura from him.

In the early 1930s, Slastion helped shape the standard Kyiv bandura’s form, and other bandura designs were based on his ideas.

As a folklorist and ethnographer, he traveled in Ukraine to study kobzar traditions. He helped preserve kobzar music through phonograph recordings: in 1902-1903 he supported the idea of using sound recordings, and in 1908, while in Yalta, he helped Lesya Ukrainka and her husband Kvitka record dumy by the blind kobzar Hnat Honcharenko. Filaret Kolessa later published these recordings. Slastion also recorded kobzar Hovtan in 1909.

Slastion died in 1933 in Myrhorod, Ukraine. He left a lasting impact on Ukrainian art, music, and culture, and is remembered as a founder of Ukrainian Art Nouveau in architecture.