Mykhailo Hrytsiuk (1929–1979) was born in the village of Pasika (Poland). In 1937, he emigrated with his family to Argentina and settled in the suburbs of Buenos Aires. In the late 1940s, he studied at an evening art school and frequently visited the workshop of the renowned sculptor Stepan Ersy, who was living and working in Buenos Aires at that time. From 1952, he attended the Institute of Plastic Arts as a free listener.

In 1955, the Hrytsiuk family returned to Ukraine. In 1962, he graduated from the Sculpture Department of the Kyiv State Art Institute (now National Academy of Fine Art and Architecture). That same year, together with Yulii Sinkevych and Anatolii Fuzhenko, he won a nationwide competition for the construction of the Taras Shevchenko monument in Moscow.