Mikhail Cherny was a Ukrainian Soviet painter and graphic artist known for figurative paintings and graphic works rooted in Ukrainian history, culture, and everyday life. His subjects included historical figures, musicians, writers, and rural scenes, while works such as Leontovich with the Choir, Lesya Ukrainka on Ivan Kupala, and Chernobyl Madonna reflect the range of his practice.

Born in 1933 in Mala Zhmerynka, Ukraine, Cherny studied at the Odessa Art School before graduating from the Kyiv State Art Institute in 1968. He continued his education through the creative workshops of the Academy of Arts of the USSR, studying under artists including Mikhail Deregus and Sergei Grigoriev. He became a member of the Union of Artists of the Ukrainian SSR in 1972.

Cherny began exhibiting in 1968, when his diploma work Marusiny Rushniki. Matchmaking was awarded and exhibited in Leningrad. He subsequently participated in more than 200 all-Union, republican, and solo exhibitions, as well as art festivals and plein-air events across Ukraine. His major works included Merry Grandfathers from the 1980s, Soon Holidays (1986), Nastya Prisyazhnyuk (2000), Memory of M. Deregus (2002), Chernobyl Madonna (2003), and Ataman Green (2009).

Cherny was awarded the title of Honoured Artist of Ukraine in 1995 and People's Artist of Ukraine in 2008. His work was included in the World Encyclopedia of Artists of All Times and Peoples, published in Germany in 1996, and he received the All-Union A. I. Kuindzhi Memorial award in 1973 and the N. Trublaini Prize in 1976.

Cherny died in 2020. His work is held in the National Museum of Ukrainian Art, the Vinnytsia Regional Art Museum, the Vinnytsia Regional Museum of Local History, and other Ukrainian museums, as well as in the collections of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine and private collectors across Europe, North America, and Australia.

Mikhail Nikiforovich Cherny