Mykhailo Fedorovitch Andriyenko-Nechytailo, better known in France as Mikhail Fedorovich Andreenko, was one of the great Ukrainian modernist painters and stage designers who lived and worked in Paris between 1923 and 1982. He was born into a noble family in 1894 and raised in the southern city of Kherson. Between 1912 and 1917, he studied under Roerikh, Rylov, and Bilibin at the art school of the Imperial Society for the Encouragement of the Arts in Saint Petersburg. Revolutionary events, however, precipitated his return to Ukraine. From Odesa, he illegally crossed into Romania and made his way to Chisinau in Moldova. From there, he continued to Bucharest and then Prague. He devoted most of his time to designing stage sets for theatres in Saint Petersburg, Odessa, Prague, Paris, and for the Royal Opera in Bucharest. In 1923 he arrived in Paris as a refugee and lived and created there until his death in 1982. He worked on sets for the films Casanova and Scheherazade and continued to paint in a variety of styles reflecting the period – first in the cubist-constructivist manner, then, in the 1930s, Andreenko produced a series of surrealist paintings. In the 1940s, he switched to neorealism and painted a number of portraits and cityscapes which he called his “Vanishing Paris” series. Finally, from 1958 onwards, Andreenko returned to a non-representational abstraction and constructivism. He also experimented in collage using materials as diverse as sandpaper, texture paint and cork chips. His work is characterized by a precision of composition that harmonises subtly with colour. His stage sets are remarkable for their laconic quality and architectural schematism, and his costume designs are remarkable for their richness. He occupies a distinct place in the Ukrainian section of the avant-garde school of Paris. Curiously, he lived like a recluse, especially in his later years when many of his friends departed. He seemed uninterested in fame or fortune, and like Hryshchenko and Khmeliuk, he never obtained French citizenship. He remained a Ukrainian and carefully guarded his Ukrainian identity. When approached by a Russian cultural official in Paris asking him to be a spokesman for Russian artists in Paris – aware of the pattern of subsuming Ukrainian accomplishments and identity under a Russian cultural lens during the Soviet times – he declined and was told his place in history would disappear. On the contrary, thanks to the efforts of collectors and art connoisseurs such as the Ilkiws, Susak, Popovych, Virsta, and others, he did not disappear and his place in history is solidly assured. In this, the Ilkiws fulfilled the artist’s wish that his works be collected and exhibited by Ukrainian diaspora expatriates living in the West.