TANGO FOR THREE: A True Story About a Fictional Romance. Correspondence between Ivan Ostafiychuk and Natalka Husar

This book is a captivating and artistically sophisticated story that could be the basis for a movie. It is a novel in letters, where every line breathes art and true feelings.

In the 1970s, a young, charismatic and talented Lviv artist, Ivan Ostafiychuk, decides to leave the USSR, escaping from KGB control, censorship and repression. Friends from the Ukrainian diaspora advise him to arrange a sham marriage. The chosen "bride" is Natalka Husar, a student at an art college. She agrees and carries on this correspondence "romance" for over five years.

Their correspondence is so insightful that cultural anthropologist Natalia Khanenko-Friesen, the author of the introductory article, questions the fictitious nature of the relationship. The letters read like a sincere love story — despite the fact that the wedding never happened and Ivan was never released from the USSR.

But fate has its surprises - the meeting took place... in Toronto! How exactly? Read about it in the book itself.

About the heroes:

• Ivan Ostafiychuk is an outstanding Ukrainian artist, laureate of the Shevchenko Prize.
• Natalka Husar is a well-known Canadian artist of Ukrainian origin.

Natalka Husar : "We grew up with this ideology that for the sake of Ukraine you will sacrifice everything. And why not get married, make this gesture to help someone move. You will do it because you are lucky to live here, in a free country, and they are in prison there... This is your civic duty... if you are a conscious Ukrainian. To help, to support... everything you can do. Whether it is financially, or to go through all this bureaucratic red tape to help. And especially if you help someone who is not just like family. But he is an artist! And you have to help artists, as well as writers. You know, this is someone who has cultural weight, who can be destroyed! So it really touched that diasporic sense of guilt... or responsibility..."

Ivan Ostafiychuk : "I was summoned... to the colonel once a month or two. The meetings could last up to six hours, it was hard to bear. We lived then... as if under a tight lid. I had a friend in Canada, we also corresponded with him. And when the letters came through, we immediately burned them, you know."

To the story :

In 2010, Lidiya Lykhach, director of RODOVOD, saw a thick folder of letters in Toronto. “We need to print this!” “Please,” Natalka said.

The book was designed by Iryna Pasichnyk.

These are selected letters of Ivan Ostafiychuk from over 550 correspondences. These letters — handwritten and painted — are artifacts, thoughts combined with images, sketched dreams and fantasies. They also contain many stories about the life of Ivan and his friends in Lviv, about their travels, music, exhibitions, and time.