Metal badge "The elephant wanted to become a sailor" from Yellow_Blue_UA based on the paintings of Maria Prymachenko

Metal badge "The elephant wanted to become a sailor" from Yellow_Blue_UA

A badge from the collection of pins based on the paintings of M. Prymachenko.

Material - metal coated with colored enamel.

Foams of the Yellow_Blue_UA brand gained particular popularity after Eurovision 2024, where they were presented to the finalists as a gift from Ukraine.

UNESCO declared 2009 the Year of Primachenko, and a minor asteroid was named in her honor. Her drawings impressed Pablo Picasso and Louis Aragon back in the 1930s.

About the painting

The painting "The Elephant Wanted to Be a Sailor" was painted by Maria Prymachenko in 1973. Its dimensions are 61.2 X 85.5 cm. The painting was created in the style of naive art, or primitivism .

A small boy in embroidered clothes leads a large miracle elephant among the flowers . I imagine him as a cabin boy on a ship. And the animal is simply amazing: yellow with brown rings. Its large ears look more like children's gloves. On the elephant's head is a black and white sailor's hat. Its trunk resembles a horn on the nose of a rhinoceros. On one side we see two protrusions that look more like fangs than elephant tusks. This is how playfully the artist depicted an elephant who wanted to be a sailor.

Historical background

During the offensive of Russian troops on February 28, 2022, a local history museum burned down in the town of Ivankiv, Kyiv region, where about two and a half dozen works by the world-famous artist Maria Prymachenko were stored. All the paintings were lost. You can learn more about the fund for the preservation of Maria Prymachenko's work on their Instagram page.