Igor Suhacev

Most people would probably not associate HFBK Hamburg and religious painting. Yet in the late 1940s, Igor Petrovic Suhacev (Russian: Игор Петрович Сухачев; pronunciation: Igor Pjetrovič Suhačev) who would become a sought-after iconographer, studied painting with professors Willi Titze and Willi Breest. Suhacev’s icons, frescos and paintings can be found all over former Yugoslavia, Ethiopia, the United States, and Canada, in churches, monasteries and buildings of cultural significance.

Born in 1925 in Zagreb in what used to be SFR Yugoslavia and is modern day Croatia, Suhacev’s life was deeply affected by the political turmoil of the 20^th century. He was born to Russian parents who had emigrated from the former Russian empire sometime around 1917-1923 as part of a wave of White Russian emigration (who opposed the red Bolsheviks) in the wake of the October Revolution and civil war.

His father Petar Petrovic Suhacev was also an iconographer; Igor was trained in ecclesiastical and secular painting under his father’s guidance, but also in mosaics, iconography, and stained glass. While living in former Yugoslavia, Petar Suhacev created many works, most notably secular painting in fresco technique for the building of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia as well as the frescos and the iconostasis in the Orthodox Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Banja Luka.

Towards the end of the Second World War, Suhacev’s family fled Yugoslavia. It is uncertain whether Igor Suhacev had, at that time, been living in his birth place Zagreb or in Belgrade. In 1941, the “Independent State of Croatia” had been proclaimed, ruled by the fascist Ustaše regime. A number of Russian families had collaborated more or less closely with the Croatian Nazi puppet state, so when the defeat of Nazi Germany was imminent, many of them decided to leave. This is not to suggest that this was the case with the Suhacev family – they may just as well have seen the liberation by the Red Army as a potential USSR occupation and didn’t want to live under it, given that Suhacev’s family had fled Russia because of the Bolshevik revolution in the first place.

Whatever their motivation may have been, this is how Igor Suhacev ended up in Western Germany, in the British sector, sometime in 1945, in a Camp for Displaced Persons near Hamburg. The Allies had coined the term Displaced Persons for the millions of people displaced by the war, either as liberated prisoners, survivors of concentration camps or former forced laborers. In an attempt to foster and help these people, the allied forces established camps all around Europe, with the idea to also organize, register and repatriate these people. Three camps for misplaced persons were in the proximity of Hamburg: one was inside of Zoologischer Garten, in the temporary Blohm & Voss buildings for forced laborers, one in Wentorf, and one in Fischbek (Michigan Family History Network, 2025).

However, even though these camps were meant as a temporary refuge only and most people did leave them relatively quickly, some people couldn’t or didn’t want to go back to their countries of origin – mostly Eastern Europeans who feared persecution or simply didn’t want to live under Soviet rule. As an official British record notes: “In addition there are large static camps established for ‘stateless’ persons or persons unwilling to return to their own countries.” (Imperial War Museums, n.d.) Either of these arguments would make a lot sense for the case of the Suhacev family, and this could also explain the fact that HFBK records list Igor Suhacev as “stateless,” despite his Yugoslavian birthplace and his later affiliations with his Russian origins.

During his four years in Hamburg, Suhacev completed four semesters of studying painting at HFBK Hamburg, from the winter semester 1947 until the summer semester of 1949, after which he returned to writing icons. In the same year, Suhacev and his family moved to Ethiopia. In a country with an ancient Christian heritage and predominantly orthodox churches, Igor and his father were soon commissioned to work on a number of frescoes and iconostaseis, but they also worked for emperor Haile Selassie I in the context of the Ministry of Public Works in Addis Ababa. According to the website historicalhamilton.com, they designed, among others, coats of arms as well as plans for the emperor’s military hall and throne.

After seven years in Ethiopia, in 1957, Igor Suhacev with his family decided to move to Canada where he first worked as a draftsman at a Toronto architectural firm (Historical Hamilton, n.d.). Soon after, he returned to writing icons, leaving a grand impact on the Canadian orthodox community. His icons and frescos can be found in cities like Toronto, Hamilton, St. Catherines (Ontario), Montreal, Roblin (Quebec), Yorkton (Saskatchewan), as well as in US-American Chicago (Illinois) and South Bend (Indiana).

In Hamilton, where he lived for some time, Suhacev created the iconostasis and frescoes at the Holy Veil of Holy Mother Russian Orthodox Church as well as the icons and an exterior mosaic at the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Slovak Byzantine Catholic Church. He was responsible for the architecture, frescoes, and icons at the Church of the Holy Spirit Ukrainian Catholic Church, and the frescoes at the Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Vladimir, to name just a few (Historical Hamilton, n.d.). Suhacev also created an iconostasis for the Holy Ghost Ukrainian Catholic Church in Beausejour, Manitoba, (Goldsborough & Penner, 2023) and for the Holy Transfiguration Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Saskatchewan Centennial Reflection, 2005) in Yorkton (Saskatchewan), where his Icon of Our Mother of Perpetual Help was placed.

Suhacev was closely linked to Russian communities in Canada. He painted the heraldic shields of a number of Russian cities in the small concert hall of The Russian-Canadian Cultural Heritage Foundation pavilion for the Metro International Festival Caravan (Blagoveshchensky, n.d.). In 1961, Suhacev married Sylvia Karlovna Yurman, another Russian post-WWII immigrant (born in Smolensk) who he had met in Canada. She was also an active member of the Russian-Canadian society, contributing mainly to music, dance, and concert programs.