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Born and grew up in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. In 1927-1930, was a student of the professional art courses in Dnepropetrovsk. Came to Kazakhstan in 1934. She attended the workshop of a brilliant painter, A. Rittich, who worked in Kazakhstan in those years. From 1942, member of the Artists' Union of RK.
Starting from the First Art Exhibition of the Republic (1937), she was an active participant in exhibitions. In 2001, the ARK Gallery was the venue of the exhibition Family Chronicles held in memory of four generations of the Prakhov -Kuzhelenko - Leontiev family.
Olga Kuzhelenko was loyal to subjects devoid of external affects and political speculation. The genres she adhered to were portrait and still-life, the latter taking a special place in her creative work. Admiration for perfection and diversity of nature was expressed by the artist in hundreds of beautiful canvases. They revealed the marks of time (hair dresses, clothing) escaping the contemporaries, or, on the contrary, imperishable value of the wonderful world of nature.
Olga Kuzhelenko, in fact, used to create a living chronicle in her family: flowers presented on some occasion, a laid table, splendid vegetables and fruits that preserved the spark of the lavish Almaty autumn, books she read. Dear to the heart of the artist are faces of those she portrayed, chiefly, friends and relatives, favourite painters - El Greco, Goya - with art attributes.
The main theme of her canvases is the world of unsophisticated feelings. It enthralls one by artlessness of plots brought to the spectator with a high degree of sincerity. Enthralling solicitude of verification of details of one's abode is combined with the documentalist's approach, fixing the marks and interiors of the elapsed age. The rhythm of bentwood chairs placed at the cloth-covered round table, the curtain cast aside, the sofa drapery of red poppy colour produce the effect of the presence of the house dwellers, warmth and cordiality of its atmosphere, love of the artist for her quiet life.
O. Kuzhelenko has made quite a lot self-portraits - the sitter was always at hand. This genre requires impartial attitude to oneself, without the backward glance at the will-be spectator. Her portraits are a kaleidoscope of sentiments, state and age collisions. But we see a lively, spiritually sated type of a creative personality embodied in the course of seventy years.

Olga Kuzhelenko