When Ivan and Sophia Rabodzeenko touched down at O’Hare December 5, here to visit their son and his American family for a monthlong holiday, it was the first time the two Saint Petersburg artists had left the former Soviet Union. Ivan was looking forward to seeing the Art Institute and the Field Museum; Sophia just wanted to stand on the shore of Lake Michigan.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
“We kind of had this joke with Carrie,” says Andrei. “Because her ancestors are Ukrainian, we were always laughing about big faces–big Ukrainian faces. So it was this theme among us…my father was born in Ukraine, and my mom–her parents are Ukrainian but she never lived in Ukraine. We’re all kind of not really full-time Ukrainians.”
Ivan Rabodzeenko was born in Chichirkozovka in 1924 and had completed one year at the Tashkent School of Art in Uzbekistan when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. He joined the war effort, working first in a munitions factory and then serving in the Soviet army as a tank commander. Wounded and discharged in 1945, he returned to painting, turning from landscapes to patriotic and military themes–“pieces that would be memories of my friends who I fought with on the front.” He worked as an artist and set designer until 1975, when he became a military journalist, traveling to army bases, border posts, and aircraft carriers to document–in oil paint–soldiers, sailors, and scenes from military life. Returning to Tashkent, he created television features using his paintings to illustrate the stories he told. “They would show my paintings on TV,” he says, “and their parents would see the soldiers and they would be proud of them.”
“It’s hard to believe that we can have this kind of family show,” says Ivan. “We’re just so happy to be here.” He plans to come back for his 80th birthday.
