Mykola was born on November 23, 1902 in the village of Ushchenivka. His father, Semen Nedilko, was a village doctor. His mother, Sofia, came from the
Murashko family. In 1926, Mykola Nedilko graduated from the
Ukrainian Art Institute in
Kyiv, where he studied under
Fedir Krychevsky,
Mykhailo Boychuk and Lev Kramarenko. Mykola Nedilko refused the demands of the
Soviet regime to conform to the requirements of
socialist realism and was imprisoned for two years. After his release, he worked for ten years as a set designer and artist at the State Opera and Musical Comedy Theatre in Kyiv. In the spring of 1929, he married Oksana Chumak, a singer in the Kiev operetta. In 1940, Nedilko, together with Mykola Azovskyi and Mykhailo Dmytrenko, was sent by the artists' union to
Lviv, which was occupied by the Soviet army. To avoid
recruitment into the
Red Army, he was hiding in June 1941. After the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1941, he remained in the city, joined the Association of Ukrainian Artists and took part in its exhibitions. Concerned about the return of the
Bolsheviks, Nedilko and his wife emigrated to
Germany. From 1944 to 1948 he lived in the “Orlyk”
Displaced Persons camp near
Berchtesgaden. The painter took part in exhibitions of Ukrainian artists in
Munich in 1947 and
Regensburg in 1948. In 1948 Nedilko moved to
Buenos Aires and in 1961 to
New York. In addition to actively participating in group exhibitions, Mykola Nedilko had numerous solo exhibitions: in New York (1962, 1965, 1966, 1980), Paris (1965),
Philadelphia (1966, 1982) and
Edmonton (1983). Mykola Nedilko is known primarily for his
expressionistic landscapes, which he usually painted en
plein air. His
post-impressionistic oil paintings are based on strong contrasts of light, shadow and color. Mykola Nedilko died at the age of 76 in a hospital in Glen Cove and was buried in the
Bound Brook Cemetery. ==Painting (selection)==