Volodymir Masyk, Honoured Artist of the Ukranian SSR, belongs to the generatin of artists who came into Soviet art during the grim years of WWII.
He was born on May 25, 1917 in the city of Katerinoslav (today Dnipropetrovsk) into a large worker's family. In 1918 the family moved to Konotop where the future artist finished a seven-year school, then , an apprenticeship school under jurisdiction of the locomotive-building plant and began working as a jointer. In Konotop Masyk joined an amateur art studio at the railway workers club headed by A. Gofman and V. Zabolotyny. In 1935, Masyk became a second-yuear student of the Dnipropretrovsk Art School where he studied painting under M. Panin, a well-known realistic painter, P. Alekhin, V. Koreniv and E. Sahaidachny. After graduating from the school, he enrolled at the Karkiv Institute of Art. In 1939, Masyk, an art studetn, was called to military service in the4 Red Army.