ukrainian art essay

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IEU'S FEATURED TOPICS IN UKRAINIAN ART AND ARCHITECTURE

FRESCO PAINTING. A method of painting on freshly plastered walls with powdered pigments that are resistant to the erosive action of lime. Before the colors are applied to the wet plaster the main lines of the composition are usually traced on the preceding coat. The painting is very durable and is applied to both interior and exterior walls. The origins of fresco painting in Ukraine can be traced back to the 4th century BC. Frescoes adorned the homes, public buildings, and tombs of the Greek colonists and Scythians on the coast of the Black Sea. The most interesting ancient frescoes from the 1st century BC were discovered during excavations of burial sites in Kerch in the tomb of Demeter...

[FRESCOES OF] SAINT SOPHIA CATHEDRAL. Saint Sophia Cathedral is a masterpiece of the art and architecture of Ukraine and Europe. It was built in Kyiv at the height of Kyivan Rus', in the Byzantine style, and significantly transformed during the baroque period. The cathedral was founded by Grand Prince Yaroslav the Wise and built between 1037 and 1044. The original building, most of which remains at the core of the existing cathedral, is a cross-in-square plan with twelve cruciform piers marking five east-west naves intersected by five transverse aisles. The cathedral's interior is decorated with magnificient 11th-century mosaics and frescoes. Exterior ornamentation of the original 11th-century walls consists of decorative brickwork, the monochromatic painting of key architectural elements, and a number of frescoes...

[FRESCOES OF] SAINT MICHAEL'S GOLDEN-DOMED MONASTERY. An Orthodox men's monastery in Kyiv. In the 1050s Prince Iziaslav Yaroslavych built Saint Demetrius's Monastery and Church in the old upper city of Kyiv, near Saint Sophia Cathedral. In 1108-13 his son, Sviatopolk II Iziaslavych, built a church at the monastery dedicated to Saint Michael the Archangel. The monastery was mostly destroyed during the Tatar invasion of 1240 and ceased to exist. Written records confirm that it was reopened by 1496. Soon afterward it began to be known as Saint Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery, its name being taken from the church built by Sviatopolk II Iziaslavych. Restored and enlarged over the 16th century, it became one of the most popular and wealthy monasteries in Ukraine. ...

[FRESCOES OF] SAINT CYRIL'S MONASTERY. A monastery founded by Grand Prince Vsevolod Olhovych ca 1140 on the outskirts of medieval Kyiv. Its church, Saint Cyril's, was built ca 1146. The church's frescoes are fine examples of 12th-century Ukrainian art and the influence of Bulgarian-Byzantine painting on it. They depict the Nativity of Christ, the Presentation of Christ at the Temple, the Eucharist, the Annunciation, the Dormition, the Last Judgment and Apocalypse, an angel gathering the heavens into a scroll, the apostles, the evangelists, and various prophets and martyrs. Murals of saints--Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius, Saint John the Macedonian, Saint Euphemios--adorn its pillars, and compositions depicting Saint Cyril teaching the heretic, teaching in the cathedral, and teaching the emperor are found in the southern apse...

In the 8th-9th century, the second Golden Age of Byzantine art began. During this period Kyivan Rus' actively entered the orbit of Byzantine culture and in 988 adopted Christianity through Byzantium. In fact, Byzantine influence on Ukrainian territory began much earlier and was concentrated on the northern shores of the Black Sea, in such cities as Kerch and Chersonese Taurica. The earliest Kyivan churches built in the Byzantine style (such as the Church of the Tithes) did not survive the continual invasions of nomadic hordes. However, the Saint Sophia Cathedral, begun in 1037, has been preserved in relatively good condition. It represents a masterpiece of the art and architecture of Ukraine and Europe. According to the Rus' chronicles, Prince Volodymyr the Great imported the first architects and artists from Chersonese, and these together with the artists of Constantinople were the first creators of Kyivan mosaics and frescos... Learn more about the legacy of Byzantine art in Ukraine, and in particular the Byzantine art of mosaic, by visiting the following entries:

MOSAIC. A method of wall and floor decoration in which small pieces of cut stone, glass (tesserae), and, occasionally, ceramic or other imperishable materials are set into plaster, cement, or waterproof mastic. The earliest existing examples of mosaics in Ukraine are fragments from the floor of a domestic bath found at the site of the Greek colony of Chersonese Taurica (ca 3rd-2nd century BC). Made of various colored pebbles, the floor depicts two nude figures and decorative motifs. Mosaic was used to decorate various Rus' churches and palaces in the 10th to 12th centuries, including the Church of the Tithes (989-96), the Saint Sophia Cathedral (1037 to the late 1040s), the Dormition Cathedral of the Kyivan Cave Monastery (1078), and Saint Michael's Church (1108-13) of the Saint Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery...

[MOSAICS OF] SAINT SOPHIA CATHEDRAL. The centripetal plan of Saint Sophia Cathedral, internal volumes, and external massing reflect the hierarchical ordering of the mosaics and frescoes inside. As the surfaces of the walls advance from the floor and the narthex, the frescoes increase in size and religious significance and culminate in the monumental mosaics Mother of God (Orante) in the central apse and Christ Pantocrator in the central dome. Among the most masterful mosaics are those of the Church Fathers . The more archaic Orante in the central apse, often referred to as the Indestructible Wall , is the most famous....

BYZANTINE ART. Visual art produced in the Byzantine Empire and in countries under its political control or cultural influence, among them Ukraine. The spread of Byzantine art was the result, in large measure, of its style, which had all the traits of universalism to which other cultures could easily adapt. This style began to develop in the 6th century AD during the first Golden Age under the reign of Emperor Justinian. It was based on Greco-Roman art and the art of the East--Syria, Asia Minor, Persia, and Egypt. In architecture, churches with stone cupolas symbolizing the cosmos appeared, replacing the longitudinal basilicas with flat wooden ceilings...

[MOSAICS OF] SAINT MICHAEL'S GOLDEN-DOMED MONASTERY. The main church of the Saint Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery (built in either 1654-7 or 1108-13) is an important architectural and cultural monument. Originally it had three naves and three apses on the eastern side and was topped by a single large gilded cupola. It was rebuilt in a baroque style and expanded with a new facade and six additional cupolas in the 18th century. The most striking elements of the interior were the 12th-century frescoes and mosaics, probably done by Kyivan artisans (including perhaps Master Olimpii). Although many of these were destroyed in the 13th to 16th century, some--notably the mosaics of Saint Demetrius of Thessalonika, the Eucharist, and Archdeacon Stephen--survived and were partially restored in the late 19th century...

ICON. An image depicting a holy personage or scene in the stylized Byzantine manner, and venerated in the Eastern Christian churches. The image can be executed in different media; hence, the term 'icon' can be applied to mural paintings, frescoes, or mosaics, tapestries or embroideries, enamels, and low reliefs carved in marble, ivory, or stone or cast in metal. The typical icon, however, is a portable painting on a wooden panel. The earliest technique of icon painting was encaustic, but the traditional and most common technique is tempera. The paint--an emulsion of mineral pigments (ochers, siennas, umbers, or green earth), egg yolk, and water--is applied with a brush to a panel covered with several layers of gesso. Gold leaf is fixed to designated areas before painting begins. The paint is applied in successive layers from dark to light tones; then the figures are outlined and, finally, certain areas are highlighted with whitener. After drying, the painting is covered with a special varnish consisting of linseed oil and crystalline resins to protect it from dust and humidity...

ICONOSTASIS. A solid wooden, stone, or metal screen separating the sanctuary from the nave in Eastern Christian churches. Of varying height, it consists of rows of columns and icons. It extends the width of the sanctuary and has three entrances: the large Royal Gates at the center and the smaller Deacon Doors on each side. The Royal Gates are hung with a curtain. The iconostasis evolved in Byzantium in the 9th-11th centuries. The icons of the iconostasis are separated by columns and are arranged in several rows. The number of icons and ranges can vary. Usually, a full iconostasis contains over 50 icons set in four to six rows, but simpler (one- or two-story) and more elaborate (seven-story) iconostases are known. In Ukraine the earliest iconostases were low, consisting of only two tiers. Their further development was conditioned by the development of wooden architecture and the decline of the art of mosaics. By the 14th-15th centuries the typical structure of the two- and three-tiered iconostasis was established...

RUTKOVYCH, IVAN, b ? in Bilyi Kamin, near Zolochiv, Galicia, d ? Icon painter of the 17th century. Most of his creative life was spent in Zhovkva (1667 to ca 1708) where, among other things, he was one of the key figures in the Zhovkva School of Artists. Some of his work has been preserved, in whole or in part, such as the iconostases of the wooden churches in Volytsia Derevlianska (1680-2) and Volia Vysotska (1688-9); the large iconostasis of the Church of Christ's Nativity in Zhovkva (1697-9, now in the National Museum in Lviv), which is considered to be the finest Ukrainian iconostasis; and separate icons, such as Supplication (1683) from Potylych (now in the National Museum) and The Nativity of Virgin Mary (1683) from Vyzhliv. Rutkovych's treatment of religious subjects was realistic and almost secular in spirit. The emotive richness of his colors and the rhythm of his lines testify to the influence of contemporary European art on his style. Vira Svientsitska's book about Rutkovych was published in Kyiv in 1966...

KONDZELEVYCH, YOV, b 1667 in Zhovkva, Galicia, d ca 1740 in Lutsk, Volhynia. Noted icon painter and elder of the Bilostok Monastery in Volhynia. After his training at the Zhovkva School of Artists, he probably studied painting at the Kyivan Cave Monastery Icon Painting Studio and abroad. Some of his numerous works have survived, including a fragment of the Bilostok Monastery iconostasis; the tabernacle of the Zahoriv Monastery (1695); and the famous iconostasis of the Maniava Hermitage, painted in 1698-1705 and transferred in 1785 to the church in Bohorodchany upon the dissolution of the hermitage. In 1923 the iconostasis was deposited in the National Museum in Lviv under the name the Bohorodchany iconostasis. In 1722 Kondzelevych took part in painting the iconostasis of the Zahoriv Monastery. His last work was The Crucifixion (1737) for the Lutsk Monastery. Kondzelevych broadened the traditional scheme of the icon significantly: he devoted much attention to the surroundings, particularly to the landscape, which he filled with distinctive architectural ensembles...

Petro Kholodny The preparation, editing, and display of the IEU entries featuring the timeless tradition of the Ukrainian icon were made possible by the financial support of the CANADIAN FOUNDATION FOR UKRAINIAN STUDIES .   IV. THE ART OF PORTRAITURE IN UKRAINE The oldest form of secular art in Ukraine, portraiture dates back to the 4th-century BC portraits found in burial sights in the Greek city of Chersonese Taurica. Medieval examples are the depictions of Grand Prince Yaroslav the Wise and his family (1044) in the frescoes of the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv and the depictions of Grand Prince Sviatoslav II Yaroslavych and his family in the illuminations of the Izbornik of Sviatoslav (1073). Prince Yaropolk Iziaslavych and his wife are shown in the Trier Psalter (1078-87). Secular portraits of nobles, notable Cossacks, peasant leaders, and rich burghers gained currency in the 16th century and grew in popularity through the 17th and 18th centuries. A special type of portrait painting developed in Ukraine, the parsunnyi (from the Latin persona), depicting notable figures in rich attire and formal poses against a background reaffirming their official status. During the baroque period of the late 17th and early 18th centuries many official portraits of Cossack hetmans, including Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Ivan Mazepa, Ivan Skoropadsky, Danylo Apostol, and Pavlo Polubotok, were painted depicting the regalia of office. Church leaders were also well represented in portraiture. Family portraits mirrored social and historical changes in their composition and the manner in which the subjects were painted. The development of regional styles gave rise to the Kyivan, Galician, and Volhynian schools of portrait painting. Portraits were also made by engravers, such as Leontii Tarasevych, Oleksander Tarasevych, Ivan Shchyrsky, and Hryhorii K. Levytsky. The tsarist abolition of Ukrainian autonomy in the 18th century coincided with the establishment of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts (1758), which attracted many Ukrainian artists. Dmytro H. Levytsky of Kyiv became a professor at the academy and the greatest portraitist in the Russian Empire of his time. Volodymyr Borovykovsky, another outstanding portraitist, also worked in Saint Petersburg in the classical, academic manner favored by the imperial court. In the 19th century many portraits were painted in Ukraine by trainees of the academy. Portraits were also painted by wandering artists and by artists who were formers serfs, such as Taras Shevchenko, whose contribution to the Ukrainian art has often been underrated. Portraits remained popular throughout the 19th century, and, in the 20th century, artists have created portraits in a wide variety of styles... Learn more about the art of portraiture in Ukraine by visiting the following entries:

PORTRAITURE. The artistic depiction of one or more particular persons. Although portraiture did not emerge as a separate genre in the Ukrainian art until the 16th century, its existence may be traced back to some icons: the canonical renderings of Saint Anthony of the Caves and Saint Theodosius of the Caves in the Holy Protectress of the Caves icon (ca 1288), where they have been given individualized features. In the late 15th and early 16th centuries the rendering of icon countenances became more realistic as a result of Renaissance influences (eg, the Krasiv Mother of God ). In the 17th century, realistic portrayals of patrons were part of the composition of icons, such as the Holy Protectress , with a portrait of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, and the fresco Supplication (1644-6), with Metropolitan Petro Mohyla, in the Transfiguration Church in Berestove in Kyiv. Late 16th- to 18th-century religious and secular portraits at first had some characteristics of the icon, such as flattened forms, static frontal composition, and hieratic figural representation. With time, under the influence of Renaissance painting, they became three-dimensional and were painted with a linear and aerial perspective. Many portraits of patrons of shrines and churches were painted and displayed inside churches. Memorial portraits of members of the upper classes were painted on wood or metal and attached to the lids of their coffins. One of the most sensitive and beautifully modeled was that of V. Lanhysh (1635), found in the Lviv Dormition Brotherhood's portrait collection...

The preparation, editing, and display of the IEU entries about the art of portraiture in Ukraine were made possible by the financial support of the CANADIAN FOUNDATION FOR UKRAINIAN STUDIES .   V. THE ART OF SCULPTURE IN UKRAINE Sculptural depictions (schematized female figures made from mammoth bones) dating back to the Paleolithic Period have been found in Ukraine at the Mizyn archeological site (ca 18,000 BC). Terra-cotta figures from the Trypilian culture and stone stelae have survived from the Bronze Age. The Scythians left behind beautiful examples of relief sculpture. Numerous examples of Hellenic figural sculpture have been found among the ruins of the ancient states on the northern Black Sea coast. Pre-Christian examples from the 1st millennium AD include the stone temples and idols, such as the Zbruch idol. Life-size freestanding stone baby dating from the 11th to 13th centuries AD were erected in the steppes of Ukraine by Turkic tribes. However, only a few sculptures from the period of Kyivan Rus' (10th-12th centuries) have been preserved. This is because the Eastern church opposed figural carving. As the influence of Renaissance art spread to Ukraine, particularly Galicia, sculpture became more common. During the baroque period (mid-17th to early 18th century) in Ukraine, relief carvings reached the zenith of their development in architectural decoration and in the multistoried iconostasis, rather than, as in western Europe, in three-dimensional sculpture. The best and most numerous examples of three-dimensional sculpture are to be found in Galicia in the work of talented local sculptors and imported ones, such as Johann Georg Pinzel. Classicism appeared in the mid-1750s and brought with it a return to the harmony, clarity, and serenity of antiquity. Among Ukrainian artists working in the classical style was Ivan Martos, who worked mostly in Russia. In the second half of the 19th century romanticism and realism replaced classicism. In Russian-ruled Ukraine Fedir Balavensky introduced Ukrainian ethnographic elements into his allegorical sculptures. The modernist sculptor Alexander Archipenko, who gained international fame in Paris in the 1910s, is the most famous Ukrainian sculptor... Learn more about the art of sculpture in Ukraine by visiting the following entries:

SCULPTURE. A general term in visual art for three-dimensional representations made by carving or modeling in a variety of materials, of which stone and clay are the most widely used. Sculpture encompasses monuments and statues, which are usually large in scale and are meant for public display; decorative or ornamental works; and small forms. Basically it may be divided into works that are freestanding and works that are attached to a background (relief sculpture). In most regions of Ukraine the development of sculpture was hindered by the hostile attitude of the Orthodox church to sculptural images. Sculpture was limited to relief carvings, mostly in stone or wood. They were often limited to architectural decorations and carvings of the iconostases. During Renaissance secular buildings, especially in Galicia, were lavishly decorated with carved reliefs. It is also in Galicia that the best and most numerous examples of three-dimensional sculpture are to be found. There sculpture was incorporated into church and secular architecture and were particularly popular in Roman Catholic churches. The developement of sculpture in Ukraine during classicism was inspired by Greek rather than Roman prototypes and was more geometric and austere. However, classicism coincided with the decline of Ukrainian autonomy and the annexation of eastern and most of central Ukraine by Russia. Thus, most prominent Ukrainian sculptors in Russian-ruled Ukraine were compelled to work within the Imperial Russian context in Saint Petersburg or abroad...

The preparation, editing, and display of the IEU entries the art of sculpture in Ukraine were made possible by the financial support of the CANADIAN FOUNDATION FOR UKRAINIAN STUDIES .   VI. THE ART OF UKRAINIAN BAROQUE ENGRAVING In Ukraine, from the 11th to the 16th century manuscript books were ornamented with headpieces, initials, tailpieces, and illuminations. Many of these features appeared as well in the first printed books. In the late 16th century Lviv became the first center of printing and graphic art and one of the first influential engravers was Lavrentii Fylypovych-Pukhalsky. Graphic-art centers also arose at printing presses established in Ostrih, Volhynia, in Striatyn and Krylos in Galicia, and finally in Kyiv at the highly advanced engraving shop of the Kyivan Cave Monastery Press. Beginning in the second half of the 17th century, in addition to religious themes, secular and everyday subjects, portraits, town plans, etc were depicted in graphic form. During the Ukrainian baroque period, which coincided with the Hetman state, engraving became highly developed, utilizing not only new forms, but also allegory, symbolism, heraldry, and very ornate decoration. These characteristics suited the belligerency and dynamism of the Cossack period, whose apogee during the hetmancy of Ivan Mazepa defined the artistic fashion for the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The most famous Kyivan craftsman of the time was the portraitist and illustrator Oleksander Tarasevych (active from 1667 to 1720). Other notable craftsmen were Ivan Shchyrsky, Zakharii Samoilovych, Leontii Tarasevych, Ivan Strelbytsky, and Ivan Myhura, who was known for his very personal style incorporating folk art motifs. In Western Ukraine most prominent master engravers included Dionisii Sinkevych and Nykodym Zubrytsky. After the defeat of Ivan Mazepa at the Battle of Poltava in 1709, cultural life in Ukraine declined because of Russian political restrictions and the migration of Ukrainian intellectuals and artists to Saint Petersburg. Nevertheless, Kyiv still had such craftsmen as Averkii Kozachkivsky and especially Hryhorii K. Levytsky, the most prominent Ukrainian engraver of the 18th century... Learn more about art of Ukrainian baroque engraving by visiting the following entries:

MASTER ILLIA, b and d ? A 17th-century wood engraver. A monk at Saint Onuphrius's Monastery, in the 1630s he worked as an engraver in Lviv. From 1640 to about 1680 he worked at the Kyivan Cave Monastery Press. During his career he produced about 600 woodcuts for illustrations, title pages, headpieces, and prints. His work decorated such books as the Euchologion of Petro Mohyla (Kyiv 1646), one of the finest examples of Ukrainian book design of the time; the Nomocanon (Lviv 1646); the Kyivan Cave Patericon (Kyiv 1661, 1678); and Lazar Baranovych's Mech dukhovnyi (The Spiritual Sword, 1666) and Antin Radyvylovsky's Ohorodok Marii Bohorodytsi (The Garden of Mary, the Mother of God, 1676). Two albums of his woodcuts were published in Kyiv in the 1640s, and a collection of 132 of his biblical illustrations appeared at the end of the 17th century. Illia was a master of the thematic woodcut. His illustrations depict daily life, landscapes, buildings, and famous monks of the Kyivan Cave Monastery...

The preparation, editing, and display of the IEU entries about the art of Ukrainian baroque engraving were made possible by the financial support of the CANADIAN FOUNDATION FOR UKRAINIAN STUDIES .   VII. MASTERPIECES OF ROCOCO ARCHITECTURE IN UKRAINE In some ways, rococo represented the continuation and conclusion of the baroque period in art and architecture. At the tame time, it signified a fundamental departure from the pathos and striving for the supernatural and spiritual that characterized the creative mind of a baroque artist. Rococo developed at first in a decorative art in the early 18th century in France. Lighter designs, graceful decorative motifs with many shell forms (rocaille in French) and natural patterns, as well as small-scale sculpture inspired by trivial subject matter progressively replaced the flamboyant forms of the baroque architecture, overloaded with unrestrained ornamentation. In Ukraine, where baroque influences were particularly strong and long-lasting, rococo and baroque architectural influences were often intermingled. Rococo influences in Ukrainian sculpture can be seen particularly in iconostases, where carved shell motifs and interlace patterns replaced grapevines and acanthus foliage, often without structural logic. Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli and Bernard Meretyn were among the most important rococo architects in Ukraine... Learn more about the masterpieces of rococo architecture in Ukraine by visiting the following entries:

ROCOCO. An architectural and decorative style that emerged in France in the early 18th century. Examples of the rococo style in Ukraine are Saint Andrew's Church (1747-53) in Kyiv; the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Mother of God (1752-63) in Kozelets, Chernihiv gubernia; the Roman Catholic churches of the Dominican order in Lviv (1747-64) and Ternopil (1745-9); Saint George's Cathedral (1745-70) in Lviv; the Dormition Cathedral at the Pochaiv Monastery (1771-83) in Volhynia; and the town hall (1751) in Buchach, Galicia. The iconostases of Saint Andrew's Church in Kyiv and the church of the Mhar Transfiguration Monastery (1762-5) in Poltava gubernia have delicately carved rococo surface decorations. In religious painting the rococo style had little impact in Ukraine because of the strong hold of the baroque. A few still lifes, intimate in scale, appeared for the first time, however, and rococo design and decoration left a mark on furniture produced in Hlukhiv and Nizhyn in Chernihiv gubernia and in Olesko in Galicia...

SAINT ANDREW'S CHURCH IN KYIV. A masterpiece of rococo architecture in Kyiv. It was designed for Empress Elizabeth I by Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli and built under the direction of I. Michurin in 1747-53. Set on a hill above the Podil district on a cruciform foundation atop a two-story building, the church has a central dome flanked by four slender towers topped with small cupolas. The exterior is decorated with Corinthian columns, pilasters, and complex cornices designed by Rastrelli and made by master craftsmen, including the Ukrainians M. Chvitka and Ya. Shevlytsky. The interior has the light and grace characteristic of the rococo style. The iconostasis is decorated with carved gilded ornaments, sculptures, and icon paintings done in 1751-4 by Aleksei Antropov and his assistant at the time, Dmytro H. Levytsky. During the Seven Years' War the imperial court lost interest in the church, and it was unfinished when it was consecrated in 1767. Since 1958 the church has been a branch of the Saint Sophia Museum...

SAINT GEORGE'S CATHEDRAL IN LVIV. One of the finest examples of rococo church architecture in Europe. The cathedral's complex, consisting of the church, the campanile (its bell was made in 1341), the metropolitan's palace, office buildings, a wrought-iron fence, two gates, and a garden, stands on a high terrace overlooking the old city of Lviv. The church was designed by and built under the direction of Bernard Meretyn in 1744-59 and finished in 1764 by S. Fessinger, who also built the adjacent metropolitan's residence (1761-2). Built on a cruciform ground plan, the four-column church is topped by one large cupola and four small ones. The high exterior walls are decorated with simplified Corinthian pilasters, rococo stone lanterns, and a cornice. Two stairways with delicate rococo balustrades lead to the main entrance, which is flanked by statues of Ukrainian Metropolitans Atanasii Sheptytsky and Lev Sheptytsky. The cathedral serves as the seat of the Ukrainian Catholic Halych metropoly...

MARIINSKYI PALACE IN KYIV. Using Count Oleksii Rozumovsky's palace in Perov, near Moscow, as his model, Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli designed the palace in Kyiv for Empress Elizabeth I. It was built above the Dnieper River in the Pechersk district under the supervision of the architects I. Michurin, P. Neelov, and Ivan Hryhorovych-Barsky in the years 1747-55. Built in the rococo style, the palace consisted of a long central section with a stone ground floor and wooden second story (destroyed by a fire in 1819), two stone one-story wings, and a large adjacent park with an orangery and orchards. The palace was renovated in 1870 according to K. Maievsky's Louis XVI-style design for the visit of Emperor Alexander II and Empress Maria (hence its name). After being damaged and looted during the Second World War, it was rebuilt by 1949. Since the 1990s Mariinskyi Palace has served as the setting for high-level meetings with foreign dignitaries and it is slated to become the official residence of the president of Ukraine...

RASTRELLI, BARTOLOMEO FRANCESCO, b 1700 in Paris, d 1771 in Saint Petersburg. Architect of Italian origin. Having arrived in Saint Petersburg in 1716 with his father, Carlo Bartolomeo Rastrelli, who did many sculptures for Emperor Peter I, he was appointed court architect in 1730. His renovations of the Great Palace in Peterhof (1747-52; now Petrodvorets), the Catherinian Palace in Tsarskoe Selo (1752-7), the Winter Palace (1754-62), Mikhail Vorontsov's palace (1749-57), and S. Stroganov's palace (1752-4) in Saint Petersburg are the finest examples of late baroque and rococo architecture. He designed two outstanding buildings in Kyiv, Saint Andrew's Church (1747-53) and the Mariinskyi Palace (1752-5)...

CLASSICISM. In the art of the 18th century the term classicism denoted a certain general style connected with the esthtic ideals of classical Greek and Roman cultures and with works of art whose simplicity and severity of form contrasted with the decorativeness of the baroque. Its influence was felt first in Western Ukraine, where it manifested itself mainly in the architecture of palaces and villas, such as the palace of the Ossolinskis in Lviv (now the Lviv National Scientific Library of Ukraine), built in 1827 by the Swiss architect P. Nobile, or the palace in Vyshnivets in the Ternopil region. Later these kinds of buildings were built in central and eastern Ukraine by Italian, French, English, and German architects. The largest number of the finest examples of architectural classicism have been preserved in the Chernihiv region: the palace of Count Petro Zavadovsky in Lialychi designed by Giacomo Quarenghi in 1794-5; the building of Mykhailo P. Myklashevsky in Nyzhnie (second half of the 18th century), V. Darahan's residence in Kozelets; and the palaces of a patron of classicism, Hetman Kyrylo Rozumovsky, in Pochep (built in 1796 by Oleksii Yanovsky) and in Baturyn (built in 1799-1803 according to the design of C. Cameron). The classicist style was also embodied in numerous manor houses, churches, and town buildings throughout Ukraine. The most typical buildings of the 19th century in this style are the palaces in the village of Murovani Kurylivtsi (1805); the buildings of the Sofiivka Park near Uman (1796-1805); P. Galagan's palace in Sokyryntsi, designed by P. Dubrovsky in 1829; the Bezborodko Nizhyn Lyceum, designed by L. Rusca in 1824; the Kyiv University building, designed by Vincent Beretti in 1837-42; the new building of the Kyivan Mohyla Academy, designed by Andrei Melensky in 1822-5; and the cathedral in Sevastopol, built in 1843. In these buildings classicism was often combined with the Empire style, which was closely related to it...

LOSENKO, ANTIN, b 10 August 1737 in Hlukhiv, Nizhyn regiment, Hetman state, d 4 December 1773 in Saint Petersburg. Painter; a leading exponent of historical painting in the classicist style. He studied in the Hlukhiv Singing School and was brought to Saint Petersburg to sing in the imperial court choir in the late 1740s. After his voice changed, he was sent to study art under Ivan Argunov (1753-8) and at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts (1758-60). Recognized for his exceptional talent, Losenko was promised a bursary to study in Paris where he arrived in 1760 and studied under Jean II Restout, but his stay there was cut short in 1762 when the imperial bureaucrats failed to send him his promised stipend. In Paris Losenko painted his first masterpiece The Miraculous Draught of Fishes (1762). In 1766-9 Losenko studied in Rome where he painted, among others, Cain (1768) and Abel (1769). After he was awarded several medals from the Paris Academy of Arts, Losenko's achievements were also recognized in Saint Petersburg. He became a member of and professor at the Saint Petersburg Academy in 1770, served as its director (1772-3), and wrote its textbook on human proportions (1772). Losenko's oeuvre includes paintings on biblical and mythological themes; paintings on historical themes, such as Grand Prince Volodymyr and Rohnida (1770); portraits of prominent personalities; a self-portrait; and some 200 drawings of nude figures and parts of the body, which were held up as models of excellence to students at the academy for many years. Losenko introduced to the art of the Russian Empire the classicist pompier style of painting and was the first painter to depict in this style, in addition to the traditional mythological and biblical motifs, also themes from the history of Kyivan Rus'. Most of his works are preserved at the Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg and the Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow. Only his Abel is housed in Ukraine, in the Kharkiv Art Museum...

LEVYTSKY, DMYTRO, b 1735 in Kyiv, d 16 April 1822 in Saint Petersburg. The most prominent portraitist of the classicist era in the Russian Empire. He acquired his basic training from his father, Kyiv painter and master engraver Hryhorii K. Levytsky, whom he helped to do engravings for the Kyivan Cave Monastery Press. In 1753-6 he assisted his father and Aleksei Antropov in decorating Saint Andrew's Church in Kyiv. From 1758 to 1761 he worked in Saint Petersburg, where he likely studied with Antropov, L.-J.-F. Lagren?, and G. Valeriani. From 1762, while living in Moscow he was a portraitist in great demand among the Russian aristocracy. He moved to Saint Petersburg in 1769, and he won the highest award at the summer exhibition in 1770 held by the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts and was elected a member of the academy. Together with a number of his Ukrainian compatriots in Saint Petersburg, Levytsky was an active Freemason and member of Saint Petersburg's Masonic lodge. A teacher of portraiture at the academy (1771-88), he retired to Ukraine in 1788, but in 1795 he returned to Saint Petersburg to become portraitist at the imperial court. Building on the baroque, classicism, and Western European traditions, Levytsky created a school of portrait painting. His portraits reveal his expert knowledge of drawing, composition, color, and the appropriate gesture. He executed over 100 portraits, including ones of Empress Catherine II, other members of the Russian imperial family, King Stanislaus I Leszczynski, the French encyclopedist Denis Diderot, and his own father, Hryhorii K. Levytsky. One of his paintings is in the permanent collection of the Louvre Museum in Paris. Many Ukrainian and Russian portraitists studied with Levytsky at the academy, and his works influenced the second most prominent portraitist of this period in the Russian Empire, Volodymyr Borovykovsky...

BOROVYKOVSKY, VOLODYMYR, b 4 August 1757 in Myrhorod, Myrhorod regiment, Hetman state, d 18 April 1825 in Saint Petersburg. Iconographer and portrait painter, son of Luka Borovyk (d 1775) who was a Cossack fellow of the banner and an iconographer. Borovykovsky was trained in art by his father and uncle and then in 1788 went to study portrait painting under Dmytro H. Levytsky at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts. In 1793 he became an academician there. Until 1787 Borovykovsky lived and worked in Ukraine. During his career he painted many churches, icons, and iconostases, only some of which have been preserved: the icons of Christ (1784) and the Virgin Mary (1784 and 1787), now in Kyiv, the icon of SS Thomas and Basil (1770s, in Myrhorod), the iconostases and wall paintings in the village churches in Kybyntsi in the Poltava region and Ichnia in the Chernihiv region, and others. Borovykovsky's religious art departed from the established norms of Byzantine iconography in the Russian Empire and tended towards a realistic approach. In Saint Petersburg Borovykovsky painted about 160 portraits, among them Ukrainian public figures, such as Dmytro Troshchynsky (1819). Among the large number of official portraits he painted are the full-figure portraits of Catherine II (1794) and Paul I (1800). At the beginning of the 1790s Borovykovsky began to paint miniatures and portraits of women in the Ukrainian iconographic style. Adhering to the spirit of classicism, he promoted West European traditions through his art; in his later works he introduced the style of Sentimentalism and proto-Romanticism in painting. The largest number of Borovykovsky's works can be found in the museums of Saint Petersburg and Moscow. In Ukraine they can be seen in the museums of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Poltava, Dnipro, Kherson, and Simferopol...

MARTOS, IVAN, b ca 1754 in Ichnia, Pryluky regiment, Hetman state, d 17 April 1835 in Saint Petersburg. Sculptor; father of Oleksander Martos. Born into a Cossack starshyna family of the Poltava region, Martos studied at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts (1764-73) and in Rome under Antonio Canova (1774-9), where he became a proponent of Classicist style of sculpture. He taught at the Saint Petersburg Academy (1779-1835; as senior professor from 1794) and served as its rector (1814-35). Martos created numerous sculptures in Russia and Ukraine, including the burial monuments of Hetman Kyrylo Rozumovsky in Baturyn (1803-5) and Count Petr Rumiantsev at the Kyivan Cave Monastery (1797-1805) and statues of Count Armand-Emmanuel du Plessis duc de Richelieu in Odesa (1823-8), Emperor Alexander I in Tahanrih (1828-31), and Prince Grigorii Potemkin in Kherson (1829-36). His works are noted for their monumental, but restrained and lucid classicist form that conform to the Classical ideal of beauty and idealize the virtues of courage, patriotism, and civic duty. His work had a considerable influence on many sculptors in the Russian Empire in the first half of the 19th century...

DOLYNSKY, LUKA, b ca 1745 in Bila Tserkva, d 10 March 1824 in Lviv. Painter. Orphaned during the time of the haidamaka uprisings in Right-Bank Ukraine, Dolynsky found support with the Uniate metropolitan of Kyiv Pylyp Volodkovych who recognized his talent and sent him to Lviv to Metropolitan Lev Sheptytsky who became Dolynsky's mentor. Dolynsky studied with Yurii Radylovsky in Lviv in 1770-1 and was later sent to study at the Vienna Academy of Arts (1775-7). In 1777 he settled permanently in Lviv, where he worked as a church artist and portraitist. He painted the interior of Saint George's Cathedral (1770-1 and 1777), decorating the iconostasis and the side altars. In the 1780s and 1790s he decorated various churches in Lviv, including the Church of the Holy Spirit, the Church of Saints Peter and Paul, and the Church of Good Friday in Lviv, and churches in nearby villages. In 1807 and 1810 he painted and gilded the Dormition Cathedral of the Pochaiv Monastery, and in 1820-1 the iconostasis and murals in Saint Onuphrius's Church in Lviv. Dolynsky painted portraits of Prince Lev Danylovych (1770-1), Maria Theresa and Joseph II (1775-7), Metropolitan Fylyp Volodkovych, and others. In combining classical and original Ukrainian stylistic features, he departed from the Lviv guild tradition of icon painting...

ACADEMISM. Art movement based on ancient Greek esthetics and on the dogmatic imitation of primarily classical art forms. Academism first arose in the art academies of Italy in the 16th century and then in France; later it spread to other countries. Art academies were founded in Rome, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Saint Petersburg, Munich, Cracow, and other cities. Many Ukrainian artists graduated from these schools; for example, Antin Losenko, Ivan Buhaievsky-Blahodarny, Ivan Soshenko, Taras Shevchenko, Dmytro Bezperchy, Volodymyr Orlovsky, Apollon Mokrytsky, Ivan Aivazovsky, Kornylo Ustyianovych, and Teofil Kopystynsky. As advanced schools of art theory and practice, the academies played a positive role in the development of these artists, but eventually their conservatism and dogmatism, their restriction of artistic freedom, and their narrow limits on the selection of theme and formal means (composition, color, technique) called forth a strong reaction among progressive artists. These artists organized their own art groups with anti-academic programs, such as the romantics, the Peredvizhniki, the impressionists, and the Secessionists. Ukrainians--for example, Taras Shevchenko, Mykola Ge, Ivan Kramskoi, Oleksander Lytovchenko, Mykola Bodarevsky, Mykola Pymonenko, and Mykola Yaroshenko, and in time the Ukrainian impressionists--participated in this reaction too. The principles of academism were later revived in the 20th century in Soviet art in Ukraine and primarily manifested itself in socialist-realist portraiture, which was photographically accurate and conformed to officially approved models...

MOKRYTSKY, APOLLON, b 12 August 1810 in Pyriatyn, Poltava gubernia, d 8 or 9 March 1870 in Moscow. Painter; full member of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts from 1849. He studied painting under Kapiton Pavlov at the Nizhyn Lyceum and under Oleksii Venetsianov and Karl Briullov in Saint Petersburg (1830-9). In spite of financial hardships, Mokrytsky successfully completed his course of study at the academy thanks, to a large extent, to the support of his Ukrainian compatriot Vasyl Hryhorovych. After working in Ukraine and visiting Italy Mokrytsky was appointed a professor at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (1851-70). His students included Ivan Shyshkin and Kostiantyn Trutovsky. Many of Mokrytsky's paintings, particularly the early ones, are executed in the style of academism. His later works, including portraits of Yevhen Hrebinka (1840) and Nikolai Gogol, a self-portrait (1840), and Italian landscapes, are painted in a lucid, realist style. Mokrytsky played an important role in the process of purchasing Taras Shevchenko's freedom; he introduced Shevchenko to influential Russian and Ukrainian intellectuals in Saint Petersburg, in particular, his teachers, artists Briullov and Venetsianov, and poet Vasilii Zhukovsky, who later helped to secure Shevchenko's freedom from serfdom. Mokrytsky left a diary (published in 1975) containing, among other things, information about Shevchenko...

SHEVCHENKO, TARAS, b 9 March 1814 in Moryntsi, Zvenyhorod county, Kyiv gubernia, d 10 March 1861 in Saint Petersburg. Ukraine's national bard and famous artist. Born a serf, at the age of 14 Shevchenko became a houseboy of his owner, P. Engelhardt, and served him in Vilnius and then Saint Petersburg. Shevchenko spent his free time sketching statues in the capital's summer gardens. There he met the Ukrainian artist Ivan Soshenko, who introduced him to other compatriots, such as Apollon Mokrytsky, and to the painter Oleksii Venetsianov. Shevchenko later met the famous Russian painter Karl Briullov, who donated his painting as the prize in a lottery whose proceeds were used to buy Shevchenko's freedom in 1838. Soon after, Shevchenko enrolled in the Imperial Academy of Arts and studied there under Briullov's supervision. Although Shevchenko is known primarily because of his poetry, he was also an accomplished artist; 835 of his art works are extant, and another 270 of his known works have been lost. Trained in the style of academism, Shevchenko moved beyond stereotypical historical and mythological subjects to realistic depictions often expressing veiled criticism of the absence of personal, social, and national freedom under tsarist domination. His portraits have a broad social range of subjects, from simple peasants to prominent Ukrainian and Russian cultural figures and members of the imperial nobility. His portraits are remarkable for the way Shevchenko uses light to achieve sensitive three-dimensional modeling. He also painted and drew numerous landscapes. On 2 September 1860 the Imperial Academy of Arts recognized Shavchenko's mastery by designating him an academician-engraver...

AIVAZOVSKY, IVAN, b 29 July 1817 in Teodosiia, Tavriia gubernia, d 5 May 1900 in Teodosiia. Painter of seascapes, landscapes, and genre paintings. Aivazovsky was descended from a family of Galician Armenians who had settled in the Crimea. He began to study art in Simferopol and completed his artistic education (in 1833-7) at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg. In the early 1840s he travelled widely through Italy, France, England, the Netherlands, and the Ottoman Empire, and gained high reputation for his masterfully executed seascapes. He become an academician of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts in 1845 and an honorary member of the academy in 1887 (he was also a member of four other academies). In 1845 Aivazovsky settled in Teodosiia. He produced some 6,000 paintings, depicting mainly scenes on the Black Sea and turbulent seascapes and numerous Ukrainian landscapes. During his student years Aivazovsky often traveled in Ukraine with Vasilii Shternberg. In 1880 Aivazovsky established an artists' studio and picture gallery in Teodosiia, which he donated later to the city. The Aivazovsky Picture Gallery in Teodosiia houses some 400 of his works, as well as paintings by Crimean seascape artists and a small collection of seascapes by Western artists. Following the Russian annexation of the Crimea in 2014, some 40 of Aivazovsky's paintings have been removed by the Russian occupation authorities from his gallery in Teodosiia and transferred to the Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow...

GE, MYKOLA (also: Gay, Gue), b 27 February 1831 in Voronezh, d 13 April 1894 at Ivanovskyi khutir , Bakhmach county, Chernihiv gubernia. Painter of mixed French and Ukrainian origin. Ge studied at Kyiv University (1847) and Saint Petersburg University (1848-9), and at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts (1850-7), where he later became a professor in 1863. Initially, Ge's style of painting was strongly influenced by his teacher Karl Briullov and the principles of academism taught at the Saint Petersburg Academy. In fact, he was one of the leading representatives of academism in the 1850s. In 1856 he received the Academy's Gold Medal for his painting Saul and the Witch of Endor , executed in the academic style. In 1857 he travelled to Western Europe and in 1860 he settled in Italy where he lived, with interruptions, until 1870. Influenced by works of Italian Renaissance masters, Ge continued to paint compositions on Biblical themes, but he also executed numerous landscapes and some portraits. Upon his return to Saint Petersburg in 1870, Ge painted several works on historical subjects and numerous portraits of prominent cultural and political figures, including that of his former teacher Mykola Kostomarov. At that time he became one of the founders of the Russian Society of Itinerant Art Exhibitions, but did not adopt the predominant naturalist style of the Peredvizhniki painters. In 1876 Ge returned to Ukraine where he settled at his estate in Chernihiv gubernia and remained there until his death. There he produced his famous cycle of paintings on New Testament themes...

KOPYSTYNSKY, TEOFIL, b 15 April 1844 in Peremyshl, Galicia, d 5 July 1916 in Lviv. Monumentalist painter and portraitist. A graduate of the Cracow School of Fine Arts (1871) and the Vienna Academy of Art (1872), he spent his life painting churches, iconostases, and icons in Lviv and the surrounding villages. His more important works have been preserved: the murals of the wooden church in Batiatychi, the altar icon of the Transfiguration in the Church of the Transfiguration in Lviv, The Crucifixion (1902) in Saints Cyril and Methodius's Church in Sokolia near Busk, the murals (1911-12) of Saint Michael's Church in Rudnyky, and the iconostases in the churches in Zhovtantsi, Batiatychi, Zhydachiv, Myklashiv (1908), and Synevidsko Vyzhnie. He was also recognized as a restorer and conservator of old art. From 1878 to 1899 Kopystynsky restored a number of religious masterpieces. In 1888 he cleaned and restored 150 old Ukrainian icons at the Stauropegion Institute's museum in Lviv. Kopystynsky established a reputation as a master portraitist and from 1872 to 1895 he painted 17 portraits of prominent Ukrainian social and cultural figures of the 19th century, as well as Hetman Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny and Metropolitan Petro Mohyla. Kopystynsky was also a leading book illustrator in Western Ukraine. He taught drawing in secondary schools in Lviv and participated in the exhibitions of the Society of Friends of the Fine Arts...

In Ukrainian art conventionalized landscape elements were used in icons, while some of the earliest landscapes were settings for the 16th and 17th-century religious engravings. Landscape painting did not, however, become an independent genre in Ukrainian art until the 19th century. Romanticism inspired artists to record faithfully the pastoral scenery of thatched-roof cottages and the surrounding countryside. Among them were Ivan Soshenko, Taras Shevchenko, and Vasilii Shternberg. With time two types of landscape art developed, the poetic and the epic. Among the 19th-century artists who devoted much of their work to Ukrainian landscapes were two artists of non-Ukrainian origin, Ivan Aivazovsky, who is famous for his marine paintings, and Arkhyp Kuindzhi, who painted Romantic moonlit scenes. Other Ukrainian artists who devoted their efforts to landscape painting were Serhii Vasylkivsky, Ivan Pokhytonov, and Serhii Svitoslavsky. In the early 20th century Petro Levchenko painted intimate lyrical views in impressionist colors capturing the fleeting effects of light in both urban and rural scenes. Vasyl H. Krychevsky and Abram Manevich also worked in the impressionist manner. Symbolism was dominant in the fantasy landscapes of Yukhym Mykhailiv. In Western Ukraine Ivan Trush painted idyllic sunsets and panoramic views only slightly influenced by impressionist colors. In the 1930s, after socialist realism was imposed as the only sanctioned artistic method in the USSR, landscape painting was limited to views of collective farms and industrial sites. Pure landscape painting was revived in Ukraine only after the Second World War. Of the Ukrainian landscape artists who worked outside their homeland, the most prominent was Oleksa Hryshchenko, who achieved recognition in France for his landscapes and seascapes, painted mostly in an expressionist manner... Learn more about the tradition of Ukrainian landscape art by visiting the following entries:

LANDSCAPE ART. The depiction of natural scenery. In Ukrainian art conventionalized landscapes and architectural settings became part of the scenes in icons illustrating the lives of saints. During the Renaissance landscapes in icons became less schematized and began looking more like the surrounding Ukrainian countryside. Architecture and local scenery were important elements in the icons of Ivan Rutkovych and Yov Kondzelevych. Landscapes also appeared as backgrounds to portraits. Some of the earliest landscapes were settings for religious engravings. At first they were variations on landscapes borrowed from Western European models, but later, local elements emerged. In 1669 Master Illia depicted the Dnieper River in his engraving. Similar engravings by Leontii Tarasevych showed an even greater preoccupation with local scenery. Depictions of churches and secular buildings appeared in the engraved theses produced in the 17th and 18th centuries by the Kyivan Cave Monastery Press. In the 18th century, landscapes gained greater prominence in religious pictures. Landscape painting become an independent genre in Ukrainian art in the 19th century...

SVITOSLAVSKY, SERHII, b 6 October 1857 in Kyiv, d 19 September 1931 in Kyiv. Landscape painter. After studying at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (1875-83) he returned to Kyiv. From 1884 he took part in the exhibitions of the Peredvizhniki society, and in 1891 he became a member of the society. During the Revolution of 1905 he contributed to the satirical magazine Shershen' and helped students expelled from the Kyiv Art School. His realist landscapes are noted for their vibrant colors. Some of his best-known works are Dnieper Rapids (1885), Oxen in the Field (1891), Street in a County Town (1895), On a River (1909), Ferry on the Dnieper (1913), Vicinity of Kiev: Winter , Windmill , and The Dnieper at Dusk . His travels in Central Asia in the late 1890s gave rise to a group of landscapes, including Steppe , Goat Herd in the Mountains , and Ships of the Desert (1900). After his eyesight deteriorated in the early 1920s, Svitoslavsky gave up painting. Albums of his works were published in Kyiv in 1955 and 1989...

LEVCHENKO, PETRO, b 11 July 1856 in Kharkiv, d 27 January 1917 in Kharkiv. Painter and pedagogue. He studied art in Kharkiv under Dmytro Bezperchy, at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts (1878-83), and in Paris and Rome. From 1886 he lectured at the Kharkiv Painting School. He was a member of the Society of South Russian Artists and a participant in almost all of the exhibitions of the Peredvizhniki (1886-1904), and from 1900 his works displayed the influence of the impressionists. Levchenko did some 800 landscapes, primarily of Ukraine (such as A Deserted Place , Night: A Cottage in Moryntsi , A Ukrainian Village , In the Kharkiv Region , A Street in Putyvl , and The Yard of Saint Sophia Cathedral ), but also painted abroad (such as A Street in Paris and Seacoast: Naples ), as well as still lives and genre paintings. A posthumous retrospective exhibition of 700 of his paintings was held in Kharkiv in 1918. Monographs about him were written by M. Pavlenko (1927), Yu. Diuzhenko (1958), and M. Bezkhutry (1984)...

TRUSH, IVAN, b 17 January 1869 in Vysotske, Brody county, Galicia, d 22 March 1941 in Lviv. Painter, community figure, and art and literary critic; son-in-law of Mykhailo Drahomanov. After studying at the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts (1891-7) under Leon Wyczolkowski and Jan Stanislawski he lived in Lviv, where he was active in Ukrainian artistic circles and community life. A friend of Ivan Franko, he organized the Society for the Advancement of Ruthenian Art and the Society of Friends of Ukrainian Scholarship, Literature, and Art and their exhibitions; copublished the first Ukrainian art magazine, Artystychnyi vistnyk ; painted many portraits for the Shevchenko Scientific Society; lectured on art and literature; and contributed articles to Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk , Dilo , and Ukrainische Rundschau . He traveled widely: he visited Kyiv several times (he taught briefly at Mykola I. Murashko's Kyiv Drawing School in 1901), Crimea (1901-4), Italy (1902, 1908), and Egypt and Palestine (1912). Trush was an impressionist, noted for his original use of color. A major part of his large legacy (over 6,000 paintings) consists of landscapes...

MYKHAILIV, YUKHYM, b 27 October 1885 in Oleshky, Tavriia gubernia, d 15 July 1935 in Kotlas, Arkhangelsk oblast, RSFSR. Symbolist painter, graphic artist, and art scholar. He studied in Moscow at the Stroganov Applied Arts School (1902-6) and the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (1906-10). In the 1910s he began contributing poetry to Ukrainian journals and designing book and magazine covers and illustrations. From 1917 he lived in Kyiv, where he was active in the Ukrainian Scientific Society, directed an arts and crafts school (from 1923), and headed the All-Ukrainian Committee for the Preservation of Monuments of Antiquity and Art, the Leontovych Music Society (1921-4), and the Kyiv branch of the Association of Artists of Red Ukraine. Mykhailiv painted or drew over 300 works. Among them there are three prominent themes: the Ukrainian national revival, the Ukrainian past, and death. Mykhailiv was arrested in 1934 by the NKVD and exiled to the Soviet Arctic, where he died. A book about him (ed Yu. Chaplenko), with reproductions of his works, was published in New York in 1988...

HRYSHCHENKO, OLEKSA, b 2 April 1883 in Krolevets, Chernihiv gubernia, d 28 January 1977 in Vence, France. Modernist painter, art scholar, and author. While specializing in biology at Kyiv University and Moscow University, he studied painting with Serhii Svitoslavsky in Kyiv and K. Yuon in Moscow. He became involved in the modernist art movement in Russia. During a brief stay in Paris in 1911 he met A. Lhote, Alexander Archipenko, and Le Fauconnier and became interested in cubism. From 1913 to 1914 he studied in Italy and wrote several studies of Italian primitive artists and the relation between the icon and Western art. During the Revolution of 1917, Hryshchenko became professor of the State Art Studios in Moscow and was offered the directorship of the Tretiakov Gallery, but he escaped from Russia via Crimea to Turkey. From 1919 to 1921 he lived in Istanbul, where he painted hundreds of watercolors. In 1921 he moved to France. In 1927 he settled in Cagnes in southern France. By this time he had changed his cubist style to a more dynamic expressionism, distinguished by cascades of exotic oriental colors...

Defined by its subject matter rather than artistic style, works of historical painting (understood in a specific, more narrow sense of this term) depict scenes from secular history, excluding religious, mythological or allegorical subjects. This type of paiting became increasingly popular in the late 18th century in France and England, and in the 19th century historical painting developed into a distinct genre throughout Europe. Within the context of Ukrainian art, Antin Losenko, a Cossack from Hlukhiv who spent most of his creative career in western Europe and in Saint Petersburg, was the first to introduce to Eastern Europe not only the genre of historical painting, but also the subject matter from the history of the Ukrainian lands: in 1770 he painted a celebrated painting of Grand Prince of Kyivan Rus' Volodymyr the Great and his wife Rohinda. In western Ukrainian lands, in the same year 1770 Luka Dolynsky painted an important historical depiction of the Halych ruler Lev Danylovych. However, the genre of historical painting fully developed in the Ukrainian context only in the second half of the 19th century. Taras Shevchenko included many historical subjects in his drawings and graphic works. But the most significant influence on the development of Ukrainian historical painting in Russian-ruled Ukraine was exerted by the legacy of Ukrainain-born Ilia Repin. Repin's realist historical paintings, and in particular his famous canvas The Zaporozhian Cossacks Write a Letter to the Turkish Sultan (1880-91), set the standard for younger Ukrainian painters to aspire to and considerably popularized the subject matter of Cossack history. As a professor of Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts, Repin also considerably influenced many of his Ukrainian students, including Mykola Pymonenko, Fotii Krasytsky, and Semen Prokhorov, as well as other Ukrainian painters at the Academy, such as Serhii Vasylkivsky. In Austrian-ruled western Ukraine the most important painter of historical canvases after Dolynsky was Kornylo Ustyianovych. But this genre of painting found its most accomplished master in western Ukraine in the early 20th century in the person of Mykola Ivasiuk whose canvas Khmelnytsky's Entry into Kyiv (1912) became particularly popular... Learn more about the Ukrainian historical painting from classicism to realism by visiting the following entries:

Paintings depicting scenes from everyday life on the Ukrainian territories are already found in Scythian art and in the frescoes of Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv (11th century). By definition, however, genre painting is associated with European easel painting, which dates back to the late Middle Ages in the West and the 18th century in Ukraine. In the late 19th century, with the rise of the Peredvizhniki society of painters who opposed the dogmatic imitation of classical art forms promoted by Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts, genre painting came to enjoy great popularity in the Russian Empire, including Ukraine. Depicting primarily scenes from village life, the Ukrainian representatives of the Peredvizhniki, such as Kyriak Kostandi, Ilia Repin, or Mykola Pymonenko, worked in realist and naturalist styles and were more concerned with realistic portrayals than with stylistic innovation. Many other Ukrainian artists were influenced by their ideas and painted strictly realistic genre scenes, including historical scenes from the daily life of the Cossacks. As a result of their representatives' primary focus on the subject matter of their paintings, in the wake of formalist experimentation in the early 20th century, originally radical in nature, the Peredvizhniki society became a bastion of conservatism and opposed modernist trends in Ukrainian art. The naturalist styles advocated by its members were later used as the basis of Soviet socialist realism... Learn more about the Ukrainian realist genre painting by visiting the following entries:

GENRE PAINTING. A style of painting characterized by the depiction of scenes from everyday life. Ukrainian genre painting usually depicts village life. Early examples of genre painting in Ukraine include certain works by Vasilii Shternberg, Ivan Soshenko, and Taras Shevchenko. In the late 19th century, the Ukrainian representatives of the Peredvizhniki society of painters, such as Kostiantyn Trutovsky, Ilia Repin, Mykola Bodarevsky, and Mykola Pymonenko were among the more prominent genre painters. Later works depicting everyday life were painted by, among others, Porfyrii Martynovych, Ivan Izhakevych, Fotii Krasytsky, Fedir Krychevsky, Oleksander Murashko, and Anatol Petrytsky, some of whom were associated with the Peredvizhniki, and by the Western Ukrainians such as Olena Kulchytska, Ivan Trush, Mykola Ivasiuk, and Yosyp Bokshai. In the first half of the 20th century, with the influence of Western experimentalism, genre painting declined, particularly in Western Ukraine, and often appeared simply as a pretext to formal stylization, especially in graphic art. In Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s, in addition to village life, industrial themes also became popular subjects for genre painting...

PEREDVIZHNIKI. A name applied to members of the Russian Society of Itinerant Art Exhibitions. It was founded in 1870 by Ivan Kramskoi, Mykola Ge, and 13 other artists who had left the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts in protest against its rigid neoclassical dicta. In order to reach the widest audience possible, the society organized regular traveling exhibitions throughout the Russian Empire, including Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odesa in their tours. Over the years the society attracted artists from various parts of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. Among the Ukrainians who joined it were Kyriak Kostandi, Arkhyp Kuindzhi, Mykola Kuznetsov, Oleksander Murashko, Leonid Pozen, Mykola Pymonenko, Petro Nilus, Ilia Repin, Serhii Svitoslavsky, and Mykola Yaroshenko. The Peredvizhniki worked in realist and naturalist styles and concentrated on landscape art, portraiture, and genre painting. In Southern Ukraine, the Society of South Russian Artists, established in Odesa in 1890, was closely associated with the Peredvizhniki. Among its founders were Kyriak Kostandi (its president from 1902 to 1921), Mykola Kuznetsov, Gennadii Ladyzhensky, and Mykola Skadovsky...

TRUTOVSKY, KOSTIANTYN, b 9 February 1826 in Kursk, d 29 March 1893 in Yakovlevka, Kursk gubernia. Ukrainian painter and graphic artist. He was raised on his family's estate in Popivka, Okhtyrka county, Kharkiv gubernia. He audited classes at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts (1845-9) and in 1860 was elected a member of the academy. Having adopted the prevailing realist style of academism, he specialized in genre paintings depicting life in Kursk gubernia and Ukraine. They included a number of paintings of folk customs in Ukraine. Trutovsky also did hundreds of pencil drawings and illustrations, including illustrations to the Ukrainian stories of Nikolai Gogol and Marko Vovchok as well as Taras Shevchenko's poems 'Haidamaky' (Haidamakas, 1886), 'Naimychka' (The Hired Girl), and 'Nevol'nyk' (The Captive, 1887). Most of his works were within the framework of the ethnographic sentimental style fashionable at the time; some, however, touched on painful social problems. Trutovsky influenced younger painters, such as Serhii Vasylkivsky, Ivan Izhakevych, Mykola Pymonenko, and Opanas Slastion...

KOSTANDI, KYRIAK, b 3 October 1852 in Dofinivka, Odesa county, Kherson gubernia, d 31 October 1921 in Odesa. Realist painter and art scholar. After graduating from the Odesa Drawing School (1874) and the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts (1882), he returned to Odesa, where he painted and taught at the drawing school. In 1897 he joined the Peredvizhniki and began to take part in their exhibitions. Having helped found the Society of South Russian Artists, he served from 1902 to 1920 as its president. In 1907 he was elected full member of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts. From 1917 he served as director of the Odesa City Museum. Adhering to a strictly realist style, Kostandi devoted himself to genre painting, but did some landscape painting and portrait painting as well. His works include At a Friend's Sickbed (1884), Geese (1888), Early Spring (1892), Little Bright Cloud (1906), and Little Blue Cloud (1908). After his death, his style and ideas became leading principles for a group of his followers gathered in the Kostandi Society of Artists...

PYMONENKO, MYKOLA, b 9 March 1862 in Priorka (a suburb of Kyiv), d 26 March 1912 in Kyiv. Prominent Ukrainian realist painter; full member of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts from 1904. After studying at the Kyiv Drawing School (1878-82) and the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts (1882-4) he taught at the Kyiv Drawing School (1884-1900) and Kyiv Art School (1900-6). He took part in the exhibitions of the Society of South Russian Artists (1891-6) and Peredvizhniki society (from 1893) and became a member of the latter society in 1899. In 1909 he was elected a member of the Paris International Association of Arts and Literatures. Pymonenko produced over 700 genre scenes, landscapes, and portraits, many of which were reproduced as postcards. Pymonenko also created illustrations for several of Taras Shevchenko's narrative poems, and in the 1890s he took part in painting the murals in Saint Volodymyr's Cathedral in Kyiv. Books about him have been written by Yakiv Zatenatsky (1955) and P. Hovdia (1957), and an album of his works was published in Kyiv in 1983...

IZHAKEVYCH, IVAN, b 18 January 1864 in Vyshnopil, Uman county, Kyiv gubernia, d 19 January 1962 in Kyiv. Realist painter and graphic artist, one of the most popular artists in Ukraine of his time. He studied art at the Kyivan Cave Monastery Icon Painting Studio (1876-82), the Kyiv Drawing School (1882-4), and the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts (1884-8). In 1883-4 he took part in the restoration of the 12th-century frescoes in Saint Cyril's Church in Kyiv, and later painted the refectory and the All-Saints Church of the Kyivan Cave Monastery. He executed numerous landscapes, genre scenes, and paintings on historical themes. A prolific illustrator, he worked for Russian journals at the time when Ukrainian ones were forbidden, and often referred to Ukrainian themes. He did easel paintings on themes from Shevchenko's poetry and a series of illustrations and the cover for the jubilee edition of Kobzar (The Minstrel, 1940). Izhakevych also illustrated the works of Lesia Ukrainka, Nikolai Gogol, Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, Ivan Franko, Vasyl Stefanyk, and others. By style he belongs to the Populist School of the second half of the 19th century...

The preparation, editing, and display of the IEU entries associated with the Ukrainian genre painting were made possible by the financial support of the CANADIAN FOUNDATION FOR UKRAINIAN STUDIES .

An important movement in painting that arose in France in the late 1860s and is linked with artists such as Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, August Renoir, and Alfred Sisley, impressionism had a strong influence on Ukrainian painting. The first Ukrainian impressionists appeared at the end of the 19th century and were graduates of the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts. Impressionism remained a major trend in Ukrainian painting until the early 1930s and it gave rise to Neo-impressionism, which attempted to base painting on scientific theory; Postimpressionism, which cultivated the esthetics of color; and Pointillism, which broke down colors into their elementary hues and distributed them in mosaic-like patterns... Learn more about the influence of the impressionist movement on Ukrainian art and the major representatives of this style in Ukraine by visiting the following entries:

IMPRESSIONISM. The original French impressionist painters sought to capture with short strokes of unmixed pigment the play of sunlight on objects. The name of the movement was derived from Claude Monet's Impressions: Sunrise (1872). Oleksa Novakivsky, who later embraced symbolic expressionism, was one of the first Ukrainian impressionists. Ivan Trush, who preferred to work with grayed colors, adopted impressionism only partly. Mykola Burachek captured the sunbathed colors of the Ukrainian steppe, while Mykhailo Zhuk and Ivan Severyn introduced decorative elements into their impressionist works. Other leading exponents of Ukrainian impressionism were Oleksander Murashko, Vasyl Krychevsky, Petro Kholodny (landscapes and portraits), Mykola Hlushchenko, and Oleksii Shovkunenko...

OLEKSANDER MURASHKO, b 7 September 1875 in Kyiv, d 14 June 1919 in Kyiv. Painter. He studied at the Kyiv Drawing School (1891-4), under Ilia Repin at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts (1894-1900), and in Munich and Paris (1902�4). In 1907 he settled in Kyiv, where he taught painting at the Kyiv Art School and at his own studio. In 1909 he exhibited his canvases in Paris, Munich, and Amsterdam, and in 1910 at the international exhibition in Venice and at one-man shows in Berlin, Koln, and Dusseldorf. From 1911 he exhibited with the Munich Sezession group. In 1916 he joined the Peredvizhniki society and became a founding member of the Kyiv Society of Artists. He was a cofounder of the Ukrainian State Academy of Arts in 1917 and served there as a professor and rector. Murashko's style evolved from the realism of the Peredvizhniki school into a vivid, colorful impressionism...

KRYCHEVSKY, VASYL, b 12 January 1873 in Vorozhba, Lebedyn county, Kharkiv gubernia, d 15 November 1952 in Caracas, Venezuela. Outstanding art scholar, architect, painter, graphic artist, set designer, and a master of applied and decorative art. Working as an independent architect and artist, he achieved a national reputation by the time of the outbreak of the First World War. During the revolutionary period he was a founder and the first president of the Ukrainian State Academy of Arts. After the war he lived briefly in Paris before immigrating in 1947 to South America. As a painter Krychevsky was deeply influenced by French impressionism. The pure and harmonious colors of his south-Ukrainian landscapes or Kyiv cityscapes (done in oils and watercolors) convey a lyrical atmosphere...

BURACHEK, MYKOLA, b 16 March 1871 in Letychiv, Podilia gubernia, d 12 August 1942 in Kharkiv. Impressionist painter and pedagogue. Burachek studied in Kyiv and graduated from the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts in 1910. His first exhibit was held in 1907. In 1910-12 he worked in the studio of Henri Matisse in Paris. In 1917-22 he served as professor at the Ukrainian State Academy of Arts in Kyiv and then at the Kyiv State Art Institute and the Lysenko Music and Drama School in Kyiv. From 1925 to 1934 he was rector of the Kharkiv Art Institute and then returned to the Kyiv State Art Institute. A master landscape painter, he rendered Ukrainian landscapes in a colorful, impressionist style...

HLUSHCHENKO, MYKOLA, b 17 September 1901 in Novomoskovske, Katerynoslav gubernia, d 31 October 1977 in Kyiv. Artist. A graduate of the Academy of Art in Berlin (1924), from 1925 he worked in Paris where he immediately attracted the attention of French critics. From the Neue Sachlichkeit style of his Berlin period he changed to postimpressionism. Besides numerous French, Italian, Dutch, and (later) Ukrainian landscapes, he also painted flowers, still life, nudes, and portraits. At the beginning of the 1930s, Hlushchenko belonged to the Association of Independent Ukrainian Artists and helped organize its large exhibition of Ukrainian, French, and Italian paintings at the National Museum in Lviv. In 1936 he moved to the USSR, but was allowed to live in Ukraine only after the war...

Art critics, including Guillaume Apollinaire, first took notice of Mykhailo Boichuk's art in 1910 in Paris, when he participated in exhibitions of the Salon d'Automne, and, together with his students, held an exhibition at the Salon des Independants on the theme of the revival of Byzantine art. Having witnessed the birth of modern art in Paris, Boichuk attempted to blend it with his native tradition, developing a style of simplified monumental forms inspired by traditional Byzantine and Ukrainian icon, the Italian Renaissance painting of the Quattrocento period, and the Ukrainian folk art. This style, having won high critical acclaim, became known as Boichukism. In the 1920s, its followers made up a dominant part of the membership of Association of Revolutionary Art of Ukraine, which developed a unique and powerful school of Ukrainian monumental art. However, Boichukism was often attacked by official Soviet critics for 'formalism,' 'bourgeois nationalism,' and focusing on the countryside. During the Salinist terror, Boichuk and his most prominent students and collaborators, Vasyl Sedliar, Ivan Padalka, Sofiia Nalepinska-Boichuk, and Mykola Kasperovych, were arrested by the NKVD and executed. Categorized as the 'bourgeois-nationalist art,' most of Boichuk's and his students' frescoes and paintings were destroyed by the Soviet authorities... Learn more about Mykhailo Boichuk and his school of Ukrainian monumental art by visiting the following entries:

BOICHUK, MYKHAILO, b 30 October 1882 in Romanivka, Ternopil county, d 13 July 1937 in Kyiv. Influential Ukrainian modernist painter, graphic artist, and teacher. Boichuk studied at Yuliian Pankevych's art studio in Lviv (1898), a private art school in Vienna (1899), and the Cracow Academy of Arts (1899-1905). He continued his studies in Munich, Vienna, and Paris. In 1909 he founded his own studio-school in Paris, at which his future wife Sofiia Nalepinska, Mykola Kasperovych, and other painters studied. After the Revolution of 1917 Boichuk lived in Kyiv. There he became a founding professor of the Ukrainian State Academy of Arts, taught monumental art at the academy, and was briefly its rector. In 1925 he was one of the founders of the Association of Revolutionary Art of Ukraine. Boichuk formed a school of monumental painting, which continued to develop in Ukraine into the 1930s. Arrested by the NKVD in November 1936 on the charge of being an 'agent of the Vatican,' he was executed together with his students Ivan Padalka and Vasyl Sedliar...

The early 20th-century avant-garde movement had a direct impact on Ukrainian painting. Artists born in Ukraine, as well as those who considered themselves Ukrainian by nationality, were in its vanguard and they strongly influenced the development of such avant-garde artistic trends as futurism, cubo-futurism, suprematism, and constructivism. The most prominent of them were Kazimir Malevich (the founder of suprematism), David Burliuk and Vladimir Burliuk (the founders of futurism in the Russian Empire), Alexandra Ekster (whose innovative stage and costume designs gained international renown), Oleksander Bohomazov (a master cubo-futurist), and Vladimir Tatlin (one of the founders of constructivism). The first exhibition of the new art in Ukraine (and in the Russian Empire as well) was organized in Kyiv in 1908 by Davyd and Vladimir Burliuk, Alexandra Ekster, and Oleksander Bohomazov. During the 1910s artists from Ukraine played a crucial role in the development of avant-garde artistic trends in Russia. At the same time, they had close contacts with Western avant-garde artists, particularly in France (Paris) and Germany. In fact, a group of artists from Ukraine who resided in Paris and/or Berlin, such as Alexander Archipenko, Vladimir Baranoff-Rossine, Sonia Delaunay-Terk, and Mykhailo Andriienko-Nechytailo, had a considerable impact on the evolution of the avant-garde art in Western Europe. During the relatively liberal period of the 1920s in Soviet Ukraine, a variety of styles flourished and avant-garde art was taught at Ukrainian art schools, particularly at the Kyiv State Art Institute. Cubo-futurist and constructovist art works were produced in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and other cities by such younger artists as Vasyl Yermilov, Vadym Meller, Viktor Palmov, and Anatol Petrytsky. However, in the 1930s all avant-garde activities in Soviet Ukraine came to a halt with the introduction of socialist realism as the only literary and artistic method permitted by the communist regime... Learn more about the early 20th-century Ukrainian avant-garde artists by visiting the following entries:

EKSTER, ALEXANDRA (also Exter; nee Grigorovich), b 6 January 1882 in Bialystok, Hrodna gubernia, d 17 March 1949 in Fontenay-aux-Roses near Paris, France. Avant-garde painter and theatrical set designer and costume designer working within the currents of cubism, cubo-futurism, suprematism, and constructivism. In 1906 she graduated from Kiev Art School where she studied under Mykola Pymonenko together with, among others, Oleksander Bohomazov and Alexander Archipenko. From 1908 to 1924 she intermittently lived in Kyiv, Saint Petersburg, Odesa, Paris, Rome, and Moscow, but she played a particularly important role on the Kyiv art scene. Her painting studio grouped Kyiv's artistic and intellectual elite. In Paris, Ekster was a personal friend of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Gertrude Stein. In 1914, she participated in the Salon des Independants exhibitions together with Kazimir Malevich, Alexander Archipenko, Vadym Meller, Sonia Delaunay-Terk and other artists. Exter's early paintings featured elements of cubism, futurism (cubo-futurism), and the Art Deco movement. Later her set designs featured elements of constructivism. In general, her art absorbed influences from a variety of sources and cultures. She was particularly fascinated, however, with the Ukrainian folk art and in 1915-6 she organized the peasant craft cooperatives in the villages Skoptsi and Verbivka which produced, among others, kilims based on Kazimir Malevich's suprematist designs. Ekster brought the colourful palette of the Ukrainian folk art into thus far monochromatic cubist paintings. Proclaiming a close affinity between the avant-garde and folk art, Ekster exhibited her works together with a Ukrainian naive artist Hanna Sobachko-Shostak and other folk painters...

Painters and sculptors from Ukraine were very heavily involved in the artistic revolution that swept Europe in the first decade of the twentieth century. Many spent time in Western Europe, particularly in Paris, in the prewar years, among them Vadym Meller, Alexander Archipenko, Alexandra Ekster (Exter), Mykhailo Boichuk, David Burliuk, Sofiia Levytska, Aleksandr Shevchenko, Vladimir Tatlin, N. Altman, and D. Shterenberg. Some, like Oleksa Hryshchenko (Alexis Gritchenko), Mykhailo Andriienko-Nechytailo (Michel Andreenko), and K. Redko came to Paris after the First World War, and several of them settled there permanently. Some of these artists, such as Alexander Archipenko, exerted a profound influence on European and world 20th-century art. Learn more about Ukrainian modernist artists in Paris and view numerous illustrations of their works by visiting such entries as:

MODERNISM. An international movement in literature and art that emphasized the sense of a radical break with the past and the possibility of a transformed world. Emerging at the end of the nineteenth century as a rejection of realism and populism, it experimented with new literary and artistic forms, often under the influence of photography, film, and new technologies. Non-traditional materials were often used in architecture and sculpture, such as new metal alloys, glass, and synthetic plastics. The focus in literature and art was often on subjective perceptions and on the inner psychological conflicts and complexes of the urban intelligentsia. Depictions of individual personalities often included the eccentric, the taboo, and the deranged. Modernism coincided with and reflected the rapid growth of capitalist production and the rise of strong feminist, political, and national movements...

ARCHIPENKO ALEXANDER, b 30 May 1887 in Kyiv, d 25 February 1964 in New York. Modernist sculptor, painter, pedagogue, and a full member of the International Institute of Arts and Literature from 1953. Archipenko studied art at the Kyiv Art School in 1902-5, in Moscow in 1906-8, and then briefly at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His first one-man show took place in 1906 in Ukraine. He moved to Paris in 1909. In 1910 he exhibited his works with a group of Cubists at the Salon des Artistes Independants and then exhibited his works there annually until 1914. In 1912 Archipenko joined a new artistic group--La Section d'Or, which numbered among its members P. Picasso, G. Braque, J. Gris, F. Leger, R. Delaunay, R. de la Fresnaye, J. Villon, F. Picabia, and M. Duchamp--and participated in the group's exhibitions...

HRYSHCHENKO, OLEKSA, b 2 April 1883 in Krolevets, Chernihiv gubernia, d 28 January 1977 in Vence, France. Modernist painter, art scholar, and author. While specializing in biology at Kyiv University and Moscow University, he studied painting with Serhii Svitoslavsky in Kyiv and K. Yuon in Moscow. During a brief stay in Paris in 1911 he met A. Lhote, Alexander Archipenko, and Le Fauconnier and became interested in cubism. From 1913 to 1914 he studied in Italy and wrote several studies of Italian primitive artists and the relation between the icon and Western art. During the Revolution of 1917, Hryshchenko became professor of the State Art Studios in Moscow and was offered the directorship of the Tretiakov Gallery, but he escaped from Russia via Crimea to Turkey...

BOICHUK, MYKHAILO, b 30 October 1882 in Romanivka, Ternopil county, d 13 July 1937 in Kyiv. Influential Ukrainian modernist painter, graphic artist, and teacher. Boichuk studied at Yuliian Pankevych's art studio in Lviv (1898), a private art school in Vienna (1899), and the Cracow Academy of Arts (1899-1905). He continued his studies at the Munich and Vienna academies of art and exhibited his works at the Latour Gallery in Lviv in 1905 and in Munich in 1907. While living in Paris (1907-10), Boichuk visited the Academie Ranson and P. Serusier's studio, and, in 1909, he founded his own studio-school, at which his future wife Sofiia Nalepinska, Mykola Kasperovych, S. Baudouin de Courtenay, S. Segno, J. Lewakowska, O. Shaginian, and H. Szramm studied...

ANDRIIENKO-NECHYTAILO, MYKHAILO (known in France as Michel Andreenko), b 29 December 1894 in Odesa, d 12 November 1982 in Paris. Modernist painter and stage designer. In 1912-17 Andriienko-Nechytailo studied with N. Rerikh, A. Rylov, and I. Bilibin at the art school of the Society for the Promotion of the Arts in Saint Petersburg. In 1914-16 he exhibited the composition Black Dome and his first cubist works in Saint Petersburg. In 1914 he participated in an international graphics exhibition in Leipzig. In 1917-24 he devoted most of his time to designing stage sets for various theaters--in Saint Petersburg, Odesa, Prague, Paris, and for the Royal Opera in Bucharest. In Paris, where he lived from 1923, he also worked on sets for the films Casanova and Sheherazade and continued to paint in the cubist-constructivist style...

In the last few decades of the 19th century Ukrainian artists in Austrian-ruled Western Ukraine adapted to European trends, particularly those prevalent in Vienna and Cracow, where some of them had studied. Among them were Luka Dolynsky, Kornylo Ustyianovych, and Teofil Kopystynsky, all of whom depicted rural life through a romanticized ethnographic prism and were active in decorating churches. Both Mykola Ivasiuk, who was known for his panoramic historical canvases, and Antin Manastyrsky remained dedicated realists. At the beginning of the 20th century, impressionism influenced the work of Ivan Trush (although for the most part he remained a realist), Osyp Kurylas, and Olena Kulchytska. Other artists who worked in the impressionist style included Modest Sosenko and Yaroslav Pstrak. In interwar Western Ukraine under Polish rule, the most prominent Lviv painter was Oleksa Novakivsky, who began as an impressionist and was attracted by French postimpressionism and expressionism. He painted portraits and landscapes, and through his Novakivsky Art School he influenced an entire generation of future artists who went on to explore modern trends in art. The revival of the Byzantine style of church mural painting and decoration in Western Ukraine was encouraged by Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky, a great patron of the arts. One of the leading masters of Neo-Byzantinism was an emigre from central Ukraine, Petro Kholodny. Roman Selsky experimented with surrealism while his wife, Margit Selska, painted under the influence of constructivism and cubism; Mykola Butovych, Pavlo Kovzhun, and Robert Lisovsky explored cubism and abstraction. After the Second World War many Ukrainian artists fled from communist rule and settled in the West. Among those who remained in Western Ukraine, Roman Selsky, Margit Selska, and Vitold Manastyrsky managed to avoid the narrow confines of socialist realism and had a great influence on the formation of the next generation of western Ukrainian artists... Learn more about Ukrainian artists in Western Ukraine in the first half of the 20th century by visiting the following entries:

The preparation, editing, and display of the IEU entries about Ukrainian artists in Western Ukraine in the first half of the 20th century were made possible by the financial support of the CANADIAN FOUNDATION FOR UKRAINIAN STUDIES .

The 1863 and 1876 Russian prohibitions against Ukrainian-language book and journal publications delayed a normal development of graphic arts in Ukraine. Conditions improved somewhat only at the beginning of the 20th century, and new graphic artists and illustrators appeared, such as Ivan Izhakevych, Serhii Vasylkivsky, Opanas Slastion, and in Lviv, Olena Kulchytska. All of them were largely influenced by realism. Vasyl H. Krychevsky first explored the possibilities of a new style, combining elements of traditional Ukrainian printing with popular folk motives and using the latest graphic technology. The major craftsman of modern Ukrainian graphic art was Heorhii Narbut, who became renowned in Saint Petersburg. In 1917 he returned to Kyiv, where he made his most significant contributions to the development of Ukrainian graphic art. In his late works, Narbut aimed at a synthesis of Ukrainian baroque graphic traditions with a modern approach and flowing, rhythmic linearity. Graphic art was also nurtured by Mykhailo Boichuk, who advocated the continuation of Ukrainian artistic traditions, particularly Byzantine ones, through modern art forms; his followers include his wife Sofiia Nalepinska, Ivan Padalka, and Vasyl Sedliar. The realist style was espoused by the talented and prolific Vasyl Kasiian, who produced many engravings and illustrations on political and labor themes; as a professor at Soviet art schools, he had a major influence on the development of socialist realism in graphic art. In interwar Polish-ruled Galicia, there arose in Lviv an important group of graphic artists who were closely connected with artists in other European cities. The more prominent of these were Pavlo Kovzhun, who was well known for his cubist and constructivist book designs, Mykola Butovych, and Robert Lisovsky. After the Second World War all graphic art in Ukraine had to conform to the official style of socialist realism and was used as an instrument in political and economic propaganda in the tradition of the Vasyl Kasiian school. It was only during the brief thaw after Joseph Stalin's death that Western influences were allowed. The more prominent graphic artists of the shistdesiatnyky generation included Ivan Ostafiichuk, Bohdan Soroka, and Heorhii Yakutovych. Among Ukrainian emigre graphic artists, Jacques Hnizdovsky, who settled in the United States, achieved international prominence... Learn more about the 20th-century Ukrainian graphic art and printmaking by visiting the following entries:

PRINTMAKING. The process and art of imprinting or stamping an engraved image onto paper, cloth, or leather. Unlike engravings or lithographs, prints are not necessarily made to be printed in books but are works of art that exist independently of textual material. Early Ukrainian wood engravings of the 16th century are not prints in the strict sense of the word, because they were all printed in books. They could, however, function as prints (eg, the picture of the Evangelist Luke in the Apostolos printed in Lviv in 1574). The first prints executed on individual sheets of paper were the early-17th-century portrayals of the four Evangelists printed by Pamva Berynda at the Striatyn Press. Professional printmaking of the 17th and 18th centuries holds a special place in Ukrainian art. At that time it was developed more fully than painting, sculpture, or graphic art. Not only religious but also secular printmaking of portraits, landscapes, and still lives developed fully. The greatest printmakers of the Cossack period were Master Illia, Master Prokopii, Dionisii Sinkevych, Nykodym Zubrytsky, Oleksander Tarasevych, Leontii Tarasevych, Ivan Shchyrsky, Averkii Kozachkivsky, Ivan Myhura, and Hryhorii K. Levytsky. Ukrainian printmaking declined during the 19th century. Only Taras Shevchenko can be included among those artists who raised the level of printmaking, in both subject matter and technique. Howerver, the printmaking was reborn in the 20th century in the works of original graphic artists, such as Heorhii Narbut, Olena Kulchytska, Volodymyr Zauze, Mykhailo Zhuk, Leopold Levytsky, Vasyl Kasiian, Mykhailo Derehus, and such emigre graphic artists as Jacques Hnizdovsky...

The terms 'primitive' or 'naive' art emerged in fine art during the late 19th-century. These terms were initially used to describe 'outsider art' created by artists without a formal training or degree. Although now there are academies for primitive (naive) art and this art genre is fully recognized, we still most often associate it with the work of untrained artists and relate it to modern-day folk art. Primitive or naive paintings or sculptures do not conform to the formal principles of academic art, such as, for example, the three rules of perspective developed during the Renaissance. Naive art is characterized by a refreshing, somewhat awkward innocence, the charming use of bright colors, child-like perspective, and idiosyncratic scale. It portrays simple, easily-understandable and often idealized scenes of everyday life. In the 20th century several Ukrainian 'primitive' or 'naive' artists, inluding Nykyfor, Kateryna Bilokur, or Mariia Pryimachenko, achieved international recognition... Learn more about the 20th-century Ukrainian primitive (naive) art by visiting the following entries:

PRIMITIVE (NAIVE) ART. Pictures by artists without professional training who work in a way that differs from the traditional or avant-garde with respect to manner of depiction and techniques of paint application. Such pictures show an idiosyncratic naivete in the treatment and depiction of the subject matter and the use of the medium. Icons on glass popular from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries in Western Ukraine are charming examples of primitive art, as are folk icons on panels created by artists who took inspiration from professionally painted models. The best known Ukrainian primitive artist is Nykyfor, who rendered churches, other buildings, saints, and people in captivating compositions. Others whose work was influenced by Ukrainian folk art and ornamentation include Kateryna Bilokur, who painted flower fantasies, and Mariia Pryimachenko and Hanna Sobachko-Shostak, both of whom portrayed fantastic creatures and plant motifs in vivid colors. Of the Ukrainian primitive artists working outside their homeland, Dmytro Stryjek in Canada has received the greatest recognition...

One aspect of the multifaceted antireligious campaign, initiated by the Soviet authorities in the late 1910s and greatly intensified during the Stalinist terror of the 1930s, was the government-organized methodical destruction of churches in Ukraine, including numerous masterpieces of the Ukrainian medieval and baroque architecture. A survey of major architectural monuments destroyed in the city of Kyiv during the ostensibly "peaceful" decade of the 1930s can be extrapolated to reflect the overall scope of this destruction throughout Ukraine. Among the ancient monuments of sacral architecture dismantled by the authorities in Kyiv in the mid-1930s were such unique architectural ensembles as the 12th-century Saint Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery, the 12th-century Saint Nicholas's Monastery, and the 17th-century Epiphany Brotherhood Monastery, as well as numerous individual churches, such as the 12th-century Pyrohoshcha Church, 12th-century Church of the Three Saints, 17th-century Saint Nicholas's Military Cathedral, the 17th-century Church of SS Peter and Paul, and many others. The devastation of Kyiv's old architecture was continued by the Soviet troops during their retreat from Kyiv in 1941 before the advancing German army. Soviet sappers set explosives under the buildings along the entire length of Khreshchatyk, Kyiv's main thoroughfare, as well as under the main church of the ancient Kyivan Caves Monastery, the 11th-century Dormition Cathedral, and all of these unique architectural monuments were blown up. Replicas of some of these architectural structures, including the Dormition Cathedral and Saint Michael's Monastery, were built by the Ukrainian government in the 1990s ansd 2000s. However, the original buildings and most of the priceless art they contained, such as mosaics, frescoes, and iconostases, were irretrievably lost... Learn more about Kyiv's destroyed architectural monuments by visiting the following entries:

SAINT MICHAEL'S GOLDEN-DOMED MONASTERY. An Orthodox men's monastery in Kyiv. In the 1050s Prince Iziaslav Yaroslavych built Saint Demetrius's Monastery in the old upper city of Kyiv, near Saint Sophia Cathedral. In 1108-13 his son, Sviatopolk II Iziaslavych, built a church at the monastery dedicated to Saint Michael the Archangel. The monastery was mostly destroyed during the Tatar invasion. Written records confirm that the monastery was reopened by 1496. Restored and enlarged over the 16th century, it gradually became one of the most popular and wealthy monasteries in Ukraine. In 1620 Yov Boretsky made it the residence of the renewed Orthodox metropolitan of Kyiv. It enjoyed the patronage of hetmans and other benefactors and acquired many valuable artifacts. The main church of the monastery was an important architectural and cultural monument. After the Soviet seizure of power the monastery was closed, and in 1936, during the Stalinist antireligious campaign, the main church was demolished by the authorities. The construction of a replica of the Saint Michael's Church in independent Ukraine began on 24 May 1997. The church was officially opened on 30 May 1999...

KYIV EPIPHANY BROTHERHOOD MONASTERY. An Orthodox monastery established in 1616 in Kyiv's Podil district after the noblewoman Yelyzaveta Hulevychivna donated a lot and orchard for this purpose. The Kyiv Epiphany Brotherhood, which was affiliated with the monastery, had built the original Kyiv Epiphany Brotherhood School on an adjacent lot in 1615. The monastery's first wooden church was destroyed by fires at least twice, in 1658 and 1665. The new church was designed by Yosyp Starchenko in the Ukrainian baroque style and built in 1693. The bell tower, designed by Stepan Kovnir in 1756, stood above the main gate to the monastery. The monastery owned extensive property donated to it by Kyivan metropolitans (Petro Mohyla and Rafail Zaborovsky) and Cossack hetmans (Bohdan Khmelnytsky and Ivan Mazepa). The rector of the brotherhood school (later the Kyivan Mohyla Academy) was also the hegumen (from 1731, archimandrite) of the monastery; Teofan Prokopovych was its most famous hegumen. Hetman Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny and Vasyl Hryhorovych-Barsky were buried at the monastery. Despite their architectural and historical significance, the Epiphany Church and the bell tower were demolished by the Soviet authorities in 1935...

SAINT NICHOLAS'S MILITARY CATHEDRAL. One of the finest Cossack baroque buildings financed by Hetman Ivan Mazepa. It was built by Yosyp Starchenko in 1690-3 on one of the highest sites in Kyiv, on the grounds of Saint Nicholas's Monastery. The cathedral consisted of three naves, five domes, an elaborately carved facade, and richly embellished portals. Inside was a unique baroque seven-tier iconostasis (15.5 m high, 22.0 m wide) donated by the Kyiv burgher Sozon Balyka. After Mazepa's death his coat of arms was removed from the facade. A three-story baroque campanile was built in the 1750s. In 1831 the Russian military expropriated the monastery, which was then within the area of the Kyivan Cave Fortress, and began using the cathedral as the Kyiv garrison church. In the 1920s, restoration of the cathedral was supervised by the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Nevertheless, as part of their antireligious campaign, the Soviet authorities dismantled the iconostasis, and in 1934 they demolished the entire cathedral...

PYROHOSHCHA CHURCH OF THE MOTHER OF GOD. A church built in the Byzantine style in the Podil district of Kyiv in 1132-6 during the reign of Prince Mstyslav I Volodymyrovych. The church consisted of three naves and apses covered by one dome. The walls were decorated with frescoes, and the floor was laid with glazed and mosaic tiles. The first building of the Kyivan princes to be erected entirely of brick instead of stone, in the medieval period it was the main church of the Podil's merchants and tradesmen and housed an orphanage, a hospital for the poor, and the municipal archives. In 1613-33, when the Saint Sophia Cathedral was the seat of the Uniate Kyiv metropoly, the church served as the cathedral of the Orthodox metropolitans. It was reconstructed several times and in 1778 it acquired one of the finest rococo iconostases in Ukraine. In 1835 a new belfry was built in the Empire style above the main entrance. In 1935 the church was destroyed by the Soviet authorities during their antireligious campaign, so that a public square could be expanded. The church was rebuilt in independent Ukraine in 1998...

KHRESHCHATYK. The name of Kyiv's main thoroughfare.When the street was built, it replaced a forested valley (called Khreshchata Valley in the 17th century) with a stream flowing through it. Construction of the first dwellings began in 1797. The city's development plan of 1837 determined the present course and length of Khreshchatyk. From the 1870s on mostly three-story stone structures with apartments, hotels, shops, government offices, banks, and theaters were built, predominantly in the eclectic or modern style. In 1876 the hall of the city duma was erected, and in 1892 the first electric tramline in the Russian Empire was installed, linking the street with the Podil district. By the beginning of the 20th century the street had become an important commercial center. In 1910 the first covered market in Ukraine was built on Bessarabian Square. In 1935 the street was paved with asphalt and the tramline was replaced by a trolleybus line. During the Second World War while the Soviets retreated from the advancing German army, Khreshchatyk was mined by the Soviet Army and most buildings destroyed (1941)...

DORMITION CATHEDRAL OF THE KYIVAN CAVE MONASTERY. The main church of the Kyivan Cave Monastery. Built in 1073-8 at the initiative of Saint Theodosius of the Caves during the hegumenship of Stefan of Kyiv and funded by Prince Sviatoslav II Yaroslavych. The cathedral had three naves, which on the outside terminated in many-faced apses. Inside, the central part was decorated with mosaics (including an Oranta), while the rest of the walls were painted with frescoes. According to the Kyivan Cave Patericon, Master Olimpii was to have been one of the mosaic masters. At the end of the 11th century many additions to the cathedral were built, including Saint John's Baptistry in the form of a small church on the north side. In the 17th century more cupolas and decorative elements in the Cossack baroque style were added. As the Soviet Army retreated from Kyiv on 16-17 September 1941, mines were placed under the cathedral, and on 3 November it was blown up. The reconstruction of the cathedral began in independent Ukraine in 1998 and was completed in August 2000...

In the 1930s all avant-garde activities in Soviet Ukraine came to a halt with the introduction of socialist realism as the only literary and artistic method permitted by the communist regime. Painting was limited to naturalistically rendered thematic canvases of the Bolshevik October Revolution of 1917 and its champions, glorification of the Soviet state and its leaders, portraits and genre scenes of happy workers and peasants, and romanticized depictions of war and its heroes. Particularly in its first period (1934-41) socialist realism's range in painting was restricted to depictions of industrialization and collectivization and to numerous portraits and monuments to Joseph Stalin. Landscapes and still-life compositions were discouraged and all departures from the socialist-realist canon were condemned as 'formalist.' Sculpture was particularly pompous during the Stalinist period, in which thousands of monuments to Vladimir Lenin, Karl Marx, Joseph Stalin, and Maxim Gorky were erected. Socialist realism was enforced by means of repressions. Some modernist painters, such as Anatol Petrytsky, survived the terror, but their works were destroyed (an extensive series of Petrytsky's portraits). Many others, including Mykhailo Boichuk, Sofiia Nalepinska, Vasyl Sedliar, and Ivan Padalka, were shot. Departures from the norm were labeled 'formalism,' 'abstractionism,' or 'modernism' and proscribed. The narrow confines of socialist realism were widened somewhat after the death of Joseph Stalin, particularly during Nikita Khrushchev's cultural thaw. But even in its last stages socialist realism was praised for its Party orientation and its 'populism' ( narodnist ). Those terms continued to be used as synonyms for devoted service to the interests of the Party. Socialist realism also demanded isolation from the art of the West. Among the more prominent socialist-realist artists were Volodymyr Kostetsky, Karpo Trokhymenko, Mykhailo Bozhii, Serhii Hryhoriev, Dmitrii Shavykin, and Oleksii Shovkunenko. The style of socialist realism in graphic art was developed under the influence of Vasyl Kasiian. Notable Ukrainian sculptors who have worked in the socialist-realist manner are Mykhailo Lysenko, Ivan Makohon, Valentyn Znoba, Teodosiia Bryzh, Vasyl Borodai, and others... Learn more about the only officially sanctioned style of socialist realism in the art of Soviet Ukraine by visiting the following entries:

The very narrow confines of socialist realism that were forced upon all art in Soviet Ukraine during the Stalinist terror of the 1930s were widened somewhat only after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. A brief period of very relative artistic freedom began in the second half of the 1950s, during Nikita Khrushchev's 'de-Stalinization' campaign, and reached its most important stage in in the early 1960s, during Khrushchev's cultural 'thaw.' First, artists of the older generation, such as Roman Selsky, Margit Selska, and Vitold Manastyrsky in western Ukraine, or Tetiana Yablonska in Kyiv turned to Ukrainian folklore and folk themes, more vibrant colors in landscape paintings, and a flattened rendering. Then younger artists of the shistdesiatnyky generation, including Viktor Zaretsky, Alla Horska, Halyna Sevruk, Opanas Zalyvakha, and Stefaniia Shabatura, rediscovered the Ukrainian art of the 1920s, and in particular, became influenced by the monumental art of Mykhailo Boichuk and his school. Other younger artists, such as Karlo Zvirynsky and Valerii Lamakh, experimented with abstraction; Liubomyr Medvid, Ivan Zavadovsky, and Ivan Marchuk, with surrealism; and Volodymyr Patyk and Volodymyr Loboda, with expressionism. However, the curtailing of artistic freedom in 1965 and again in 1972, as well as the arrest and sentencing of prominent Ukrainian writers and artists, including Zalyvakha and Shabatura, marked the end of this relatively liberal period of the development of Ukrainian art. Forced 'underground,' the innovatve representatives of the next generation of Ukrainian artists later created the nonconformist movement in Soviet Ukrainian art... Learn more about Ukrainians artists of the shistdesiatnyky generation by visiting the following entries:

The preparation, editing, and display of the IEU entries about Ukrainians artists of the shistdesiatnyky generation were made possible by the financial support of the CANADIAN FOUNDATION FOR UKRAINIAN STUDIES .

From the time of Joseph Stalin's terror of the 1930s, the officially prescribed style of socialist-realism was the only state-sanctioned so-called 'creative method' in Soviet art. Ukrainian nonconformist art, that broke with this tradition, had its beginnings in the Khrushchev 'thaw' of the mid-1950s. At that time the socialist-realist framework was widened, and Ukrainian ethnographic and folk-art themes became popular. Artists began exploring hitherto forbidden styles and trends in Western art and Eastern philosophy, as well as Ukrainian art of the 1920s, and developing their individual visions and means of expression. In the 1960s some artists became part of the growing dissident movement, and Opanas Zalyvakha and Stefaniia Shabatura were arrested for their involvement and imprisoned. Unlike their colleagues in Kyiv and in western Ukraine who signed petitions and attended political trials, the Odesa nonconformists pursued only artistic concerns. During the crackdown on the dissident movement in Ukraine in 1965 and again in 1972, nonconformist art went underground. Thereafter, some artists led a double existence, earning a living by creating socialist-realist art while continuing to paint nonconformist works in private. In 1975 the First Exhibition of Ukrainian Nonconformist Artists (with five participants) was held in Moscow in a private apartment. In the Second Exhibition of Ukrainian Nonconformist Art, held in Moscow in 1976, 16 artists participated. These exhibitions gave an opportunity for Ukrainian nonconformist artists living in different parts of the USSR to join forces. They could do so only in the Russian capital--the only place in the USSR where such a gathering was possible... Learn more about Ukrainian nonconformist artists in the USSR by visiting the following entries:

NONCONFORMIST ART (aka unofficial art). A term for art created in the USSR that, until the period of glasnost and perestroika in the 1980s, did not meet official approval and recognition. The creators of this art did not adhere to the prescribed program of socialist realism formulated at the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934. They did not, however, constitute a movement, nor did they represent one style, ideology, or worldview. In most cases their art was not an expression of political dissent. What unified them was their belief in and insistence on the freedom of creative individual expression. Strictly speaking, nonconformist art was not forbidden as long as it was kept private; when it was shown publicly, however, its creators were often subjected to reprisals and persecution. This state of affairs forced nonconformist artists to work in solitude and without official recognition. Ukrainian nonconformist artists who remained in the USSR were unable to exhibit their work publicly until the early 1980s. At that time shows by some more prominent nonconformists, such as Ivan Marchuk, were sponsored by official organizations, such as the Writers' Union of Ukraine...

Ukrainians Are Defending Their History, Thought, Art, and Culture, Too

L ate on a Friday afternoon in early December, a lively crowd gathered in Kyiv’s Ukraine House, a cultural hub, to mark the opening of “The World of Skovoroda,” an exhibition dedicated to the country’s venerated 18th century philosopher, credited as the originator of modern Ukrainian culture. The show launched as Russian missiles bore down on the electrical grid, causing blackouts that made short, cold days darker and icier. The exhibit features mounted panels that glow in the dark, even when the electricity is out, and a 3-D rendering of the village of Skovorodynivka in Kharkiv where a museum devoted to Skovoroda stood until it was destroyed last May by Russian shelling. The exhibit’s centerpiece is a salvaged statue of the stage, its surface scarred and pockmarked in the bombing, but its structure and stature left miraculously intact.

As Ukraine battles Russia’s military, its people are fighting with vigor against a cultural assault, determined that their arts, letters, and cosmopolitan life will withstand the onslaught. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s armed invasion has been met with unexpectedly potent military resistance. In parallel, his effort to erase Ukraine’s distinct culture has provoked a firm rebuke on behalf of the country’s history, thought, art and culture.

Erasing Ukraine’s culture was at the heart of Putin’s war, both his motivation and a means of subjugation. In a televised address launching the war, Putin denied that Ukraine had ever enjoyed “real statehood” and claimed the country as part of Russia’s “own history, culture, spiritual space.” A PEN America and PEN Ukraine report, Ukrainian Culture Under Attack , documents how the country’s museums, libraries, statues and icons have not merely been caught in the crossfire, but deliberately destroyed. Libraries and performance venues lie in ruins. Museums have been looted and stripped bare. As of mid-November more than 529 cultural sites had been damaged or demolished.

The fight over culture is not simply a matter of preserving riches from the past, but a battle for the present and future. Following a playbook used after the 2014 occupations of Crimea and other provinces, in territories newly captured by Russian forces, Ukrainian-language library books have been removed, teachers fired and schools forced to begin teaching in Russian. An orchestra leader, who refused to take part in a concert in occupied Kherson, was summarily murdered. Marjana Varchuk, a director at a Kyiv museum damaged in early October told PEN: “Destroying our culture is the purpose of everything the Russians are doing. Culture and language strengthen our nation, they remind us of our history. That’s why the Russians are shelling our monuments, our museums, and our history. That’s what they’re fighting with.”

Alongside his military miscalculations, Putin appears not to have grasped that hitting Ukraine’s culture would instead fuel its vitality. A large portion of Ukrainians traditionally spoke Russian, but there is now a defiant push to popularize the Ukrainian language. Authors who once published novels and poems in Russian have proudly switched linguistic gears. In a half-destroyed library in the town of Chernihiv, women gather on Saturday mornings with a tutor to brush up their Ukrainian, wanting to overcome the impulse to revert to Russian, once their mother tongue. Newly passed laws require all Russian publications to be translated. Newsstands must offer at least half of their materials in Ukrainian.

Even as the city endures rolling blackouts, Kyiv hosts nightly classical music performances, including a version of La Traviata set in wartime. Concert halls and theaters are sold out. A museum exhibition focused on food will open in the coming weeks, taking on added poignancy given how the war has threatened Ukraine’s role in global grain supplies. Author talks and book events are convened in bomb shelters. The restaurant of Ukraine’s most famous celebrity chef Ivegen Klopotenko is filled to capacity on Saturday nights and pastry chefs are concocting desserts shaped to look like tank barricades. Stylish Ukrainian women are turning embroidered peasant garb and babushkas into fashion statements.

In Bucha, the site of mass killings and torture during six weeks of Russian occupation last spring, a cathedral, the grounds of which became a mass grave, now hosts a photo exhibit including images of the bodies left on the town’s curbs and sidewalks. A nearby plasma screen shows renderings of an architecturally ambitious memorial that residents hope to build on the site.

Ukraine’s cultural surge is making itself felt globally. Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts will soon host a Ukrainian visual art exhibition. Ukrainian writers are favorites at literary festivals and Ukrainian poets say it has never been easier to get their work published in translation.

The funeral of children’s book writer Volodymyr Vakulenko became the occasion for a literary show of force, with writers traveling more than six hours from Kyiv to stand alongside his family and neighbors. Vakulenko was kidnapped by the Russians in March and identified in November after his body was found in a shallow mass grave in Kharkiv. A diary he kept of his ordeal has been discovered and editors and publishers are working to bring his and other first-hand accounts to publication.

The country’s cultural upswell is powered in part by a government that understands how pop culture, advertising, imagery and social media can rally the people. The military’s short videos, set to music, have helped foster faith in the national defense. A local fashion house has adopted the slogan “Bravery Is Ukraine’s Brand,” brandishing it with a trademark sky blue and bright yellow background in storefronts. As President Volodymyr Zelensky implores Ukrainians to shelter and endure what will be a punishing winter, cultural pride and identity are proving life-sustaining.

Ukraine’s cultural combatants are patriotic, but not blindly so. Writers and filmmakers have mobilized to oppose the Zelensky government’s attempts to commandeer a beloved Kyiv film archive. Directors, film critics and move buffs are protesting the Culture Ministry’s appointment of manager with no experience in the film sector..

Like its soldiers, Ukraine’s culture warriors are scrappy and determined. But just as on the battlefield, their energy and pluck will need to be augmented by sustained assistance to safeguard the cultural wealth they are fighting to preserve.

The fate of Ukraine as an independent democracy will be decided on the battlefield and perhaps ultimately at a negotiating table. But its trajectory as a vibrant, flourishing society will be shaped by the books, art, music, thought, narratives and institutions that nourish and help to heal a people beleaguered but unbowed.

Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN America, recently returned from Ukraine where she led a delegation of American writers to witness the destruction of cultural infrastructure .

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Decolonizing Ukrainian Art History in Research and Teaching

2022, News of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies

To continue our year-long series, "De-colonizing Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies," we are pleased to feature Svitlana Biedarieva's essay, "Decolonizing Ukrainian Art History in Research and Teaching," a conversation about content and methodology for studying art history on Ukraine. It is also a pleasure to showcase her original work on this issue's cover. Bridget Goodman's piece discusses approaches to decolonize multilingual education, inspired by her work in Kazakhstan since 2014. We are also delighted to publish the first installment of Addis Mason's interview with

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In this text focused on how postcolonial and decolonial processes are reflected in contemporary Ukrainian culture, art historian Svitlana Biedarieva examines methods of decolonizing Ukrainian cultural discourse through the lens of works by contemporary Ukrainian artists—specifically those addressing complex aspects of identity conflicts actualized by Russia’s ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine. Each of the artworks analyzed here dismantles the notion of Ukraine’s postcolonial entanglements through discussions of memory, language, and trauma. Further, Biedarieva attempts to establish a new theoretical framework in which to understand Ukraine’s particular position on the world’s geopolitical map, taking into account the fading impact of Russian colonialism on Ukrainian territory.

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A new partnership project aims to create a guide to decoloniality for use in Ukraine, the UK and globally. Decoloniality – a developing practice in the UK and elsewhere – is essential for the long-term protection of cultural heritage in Ukraine and other countries impacted by Russian colonial rule. By encouraging readers to question long-held assumptions about Russia’s role as a colonizing power, the guide will act as a tool for specialists and non-specialists struggling to accurately identify and describe cultural heritage from Eastern Europe. At the time of writing, planning for this pilot project is at an early stage, but the guide is envisaged as a much-needed step towards enhancing global perspectives on the rich cultural heritage of this often misunderstood and underrepresented region. This paper focuses on two key challenges we face in embarking on this one-year project: concepts of nationality in a region with historically shifting borders and issues surrounding language, te...

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The catalog of the exhibition “At the Front Line. Ukrainian Art, 2013-2019” speaks about the turbulent political and social situation in Ukraine of the last seven years, such as the Revolution of Dignity, the annexation of Crimea, and the war with Russia. It focuses on the materials of the Ukrainian artists’ exhibition at the National Museum of Cultures in Mexico City from September 2019 to February 2020. This exhibition was part of a larger interdisciplinary project realized in Mexico City that also included a series of panel discussions with the participation of Ukrainian, Mexican, and British researchers and artists at the Museum of Memory and Tolerance and eight documentary screenings at the National Cineteca. This trilingual publication (English-Spanish-Ukrainian) documents the first large-scale project in Latin America which looked at the contemporary Ukrainian art scene and the situation in the country. The exhibition was further presented at Oseredok Ukrainian Cultural and Educational Centre in Winnipeg, Canada. Participating artists: Piotr Armianovski, Yevgenia Belorusets, Svitlana Biedarieva, Zhanna Kadyrova, Yuri Koval, Roman Mikhaylov, Roman Minin, Olia Mykhailiuk, Lada Nakonechna, Yevgen Nikiforov, Kristina Norman, Mykola Ridnyi, Anton Popernyak, and works from the collection of the Izolyatsia Platform for Cultural Initiatives (Daniel Buren, Leandro Erlich, and Pascale Marthine Tayou), César Martínez Silva, and Paola Paz Yee. Texts by Yevgenia Belorusets, Svitlana Biedarieva, Uilleam Blacker, Hanna Deikun, Oleksandra Gaidai, Olesya Khromeychuk, Ricardo Macias Cardoso, César Martínez Silva, Jean Meyer, Olia Mykhailiuk, Maryna Rabinovych, Vsevolod Samokhvalov, Paola Paz Yee, and Mykola Ridnyi.

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Critical Studies <--> Critical Methodologies

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On the Border of East and West: Searching for Icons in Lviv

John a. kohan | issue 96.

A LONG THE ROAD INTO TOWN from the sleek new glass-sheathed terminal of Lviv International Airport, a finger-wagging Uncle Sam recruits residents for a high-end housing complex with the Cyrillic-lettered appeal, AMERICA AWAITS YOU. On other signs, long-legged models hugging pink pool inflatables remind you of the seemingly self-evident truth (in English) SHOPPING IS FUN. In the city center, the fin-de-siècle façade of the Theater of Opera and Ballet displays the banner of a local hotelier welcoming you to LUXURY IN THE HEART OF LVIV.

This Ukrainian metropolis of 730,000, located some forty-five miles from the country’s border with Poland, may not be the faux-western consumer paradise of its hard-selling advertisements, but it has certainly undergone an eye-popping makeover from the drab late-communist city I first visited in June 1990 as a Moscow-based correspondent chronicling the breakup of the Soviet empire. There are more types of beer now on the menu of the Pravda Beer Theatre microbrewery on Market Square (including a Trump blonde ale) than could be found then in all of Ukraine.

Such trendy watering holes in the Old Town draw tourists as well as techies from the over two hundred IT service companies (with cheeky names like GeeksForLess) that have turned Lviv into Ukraine’s Silicon Valley. Its architecture largely untouched by the world wars, this city of baroque churches is poised to become the new Prague for travelers seeking unspoiled destinations once behind the Iron Curtain. Visitors could easily forget Ukraine’s continuing conflict with Moscow-backed separatists in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic some 650 miles to the east, were it not for the toilet paper bearing Vladimir Putin’s portrait in souvenir-shop windows.

In this age of new freedoms, the church scene in Lviv is an especially varied mix of Roman Catholic, Ukrainian Greek Catholic, Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox, Ukrainian Orthodox of the Kyivan Patriarchate, Ukrainian Orthodox of the Moscow Patriarchate, and Apostolic Armenians, to say nothing of numerous Protestant and nondenominational faith communities. In the twenty-five years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, new sanctuaries, many looking quite literally like mushrooms, have sprung up in the once religion-free communist-era housing developments surrounding the historic city center.

Delineating the border between East and West may be something of a cliché of historiography, but if any place can claim to lie on this quasi-mystical line of demarcation, it is certainly Lviv, a city that has found itself more than once (under various names) on opposite sides of the great divide between the Latin culture of the West and the Byzantine culture of the East.

Founded in the thirteenth century by a prince of Kievan Rus’ who named the settlement after his son, Lev, it passed into Polish hands a century later as Lwow. When Poland was partitioned off the map of Europe in the late eighteenth century, Lwow was rechristened Lemberg, capital of the Austrian kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria. Tsarist Russian troops held Lemberg for less than a year at the beginning of World War I, and with the collapse of the Habsburg Empire in 1918, the city was fleetingly capital of a West Ukrainian People’s Republic until a newly restored Poland took it back. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Lwow passed to the Soviet Union as the Russified Lvov under the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and was then occupied by the Germans in 1941. The Red Army reentered the city in 1944, and Lvov was firmly fixed in the Soviet Empire for most of the next half-century. The city became Lviv after Ukraine declared independence in 1991.

The old Eastern Bloc penchant for renaming cities and thoroughfares has been taken to hilarious extremes by local cinema buffs, who have turned one unprepossessing Old Town side street into the junction of Hollywood and Cannes. What was probably the original metal sign identifies the roadway as Yuri Ilyenko Street, honoring a Soviet Ukrainian film director. Six other markers in different lettering and alphabets, attached higgledy-piggledy to the same corner building, also proclaim it be S. Parajanov Street, F. Fellini Street, Francois Truffaut Street, An. Tarkovsky Street, Charles Spencer Chaplin Street, and I. Bergman Street.

Despite the constant traffic through this cultural crossroads, Lviv has preserved enough striking examples of Renaissance, baroque, neoclassical, Vienna secessionist, art nouveau, art deco, and early modernist  architecture to earn its historic center a place on the UNESCO World Heritage List, but the diverse mix of peoples who gave this melting-pot metropolis its cosmopolitan flavor is gone. In 1939, Poles were the largest ethnic group in the city, with Jews representing a third of the population. Ukrainians made up a substantial minority along with smaller Armenian and German communities. The ethnic cleansings of Hitler and Stalin turned Lviv into a homogeneously Ukrainian city.

In front of the gutted remains of the late-sixteenth-century Golden Rose Synagogue, a row of irregular dark stone slabs etched with grainy photographs and quotations from onetime Jewish residents evokes a confining cityscape and a densely packed graveyard. Dedicated in 2016, the “Perpetuation” monument to Lviv’s annihilated Jewish community is a belated gesture of reconciliation by post-communist city officials. It comes at a time when the anti-Semitic, ultra-nationalist World War II leader Stepan Bandera, a onetime ally and later prisoner of the Nazis, has been lionized by the younger generation as a hero of the anti-Moscow underground, fighting for an independent Ukraine.

The only historical markers I can find of the almost 140,000 ethnic Poles forcibly “depatriated” from Lviv to former German territories in the West during the Soviet Union’s redrawing of boundaries after World War II are the hand-painted signs of former Polish shops whose black Latin lettering still bleeds through postwar whitewashings. Enjoying a more robust economy than those living on this side of the Stalin-imposed border, Poles on tourist excursions bump elbows in the narrow streets of the Old Town that was once theirs, shopping for cheap cigarettes to take home at the end of a day’s outing .

Ukrainians are also counted among the victims in the middle-European vale of sorrow running from the Baltic to the Black Seas. As many as ten million perished in the great Holodomor (death by hunger), a famine engineered by the Kremlin during its brutal campaign to collectivize farming in 1932 and ’33. A generation of Ukrainian intellectuals and artists was wiped out in the Stalinist years in what has come to be known as the Executed Renaissance. Soviet repression came later to Lviv, but most families in the city have stories to tell of a great-grandfather sent to Siberia for supporting anti-communist partisans or a great-uncle schoolteacher denounced for keeping a home library of Ukrainian literature.

Strings of white origami doves in a side aisle of the seventeenth-century Saints Peter and Paul Garrison Church in the Old Town turn gently in the air above a makeshift memorial to those who gave their lives in what Ukrainians consider to be contemporary battles in their centuries-long struggle to break free of Russian domination. A poster of headshots honors the “Heavenly Hundred” protestors who died in the 2014 Revolution of Dignity in Kyiv that ousted pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych. Pictures newly pulled from photo albums on another bulletin board remember soldiers killed in the bloody civil war in the eastern borderlands.

Past and present history press heavily on you in Lviv. I have to remind myself that I have come back to the city not as a journalist but as a collector of contemporary sacred art. I am in search of a new kind of icon I discovered while hunting for modern Madonnas on the internet. The website of the Iconart  Contemporary Sacred Art Gallery in Lviv popped up, displaying intriguing new variations on traditional tempera-painted holy images. There were also sacred art pieces on unusual grounds like glass, found materials, and steel-and-copper-wire tapestry, all in an eclectic mix of abstract, neo-Byzantine, and Ukrainian folk art styles. A large number of artists in the listings were women.

PLATE 8. Lyuba Yatskiv. Christ Rules All , 2015. Acrylic on gessoed wood. 23 1/2 x 23 1/2 inches.

Christ Ruler of All by Lviv artist Lyuba Yatskiv epitomized what was new in these icons [see Plate 8]. Frontal portraits of Christ, who offers a blessing with his right hand and holds the closed book of the Gospels in his left, can be found in thirteenth-century mosaics in the Hagia Sophia church museum in Istanbul and on modern icons in Orthodox homes. In Yatskiv’s distinctive variation, warm earth and fire tones replace the conventional palette of reds and blues. Christ still engages you with his eyes, but he is turned in three-quarter profile, his hair numinously wind-blown. The subtle changes invest the static prototype with palpable emotive energy.

Icons have long been the special patrimony of Eastern Orthodoxy, where they function in personal prayer and corporate worship as “windows into heaven,” material manifestations of the spiritual beings they depict. One fascinating recent development in ecumenism is the way icons have crossed over into Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, and other liturgical communities. Even emerging church groups have found a place for them in their selective borrowings from Christian tradition. Innovations in this sacred art form based on the copying of time-honored prototypes can only broaden their appeal for the universal church. This was something I wanted to see for myself.

A bit of research revealed that Iconart had begun as the thesis project of local businessman Kostyantyn Shumsky, who had enrolled in the business school of Lviv’s Ukrainian Catholic University to get an MBA degree after more than a decade in the clothing trade. Shumsky wanted to buy a contemporary Greek Catholic icon, found none to his liking, and consulted theologian and art historian Markiyan Filevych. They both saw the potential in opening a niche gallery devoted to modern sacred art, defined more broadly than traditional church images. The idea became a reality in 2010, when Iconart opened its doors with Shumsky as owner and Filevych as curator.

The Ukrainian Greek Catholic connection was particularly interesting for me. My father was baptized in Saint Mary’s Greek Byzantine Catholic Church in Cambria City, Pennsylvania, in 1920, a first-generation American whose parents were Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire (a heritage I share with Andy Warhol). We never really talked about that side of the family. Orphaned in his teens, my father was “born again” into fundamentalist Protestantism, married my Scottish Presbyterian mother, and raised me in Baptist Sunday schools. I must have sensed some call of the blood, since I came to journalism by way of Slavic languages and literatures.

Greek (Byzantine) Catholics straddle the East-West divide, claiming allegiance to the Holy See in Rome, while worshipping in the Orthodox way. The Ruthenian Uniate Church, as it was originally known, was born in the late sixteenth century out of political expediency, to shore up the threatened social standing of Orthodox bishops in Polish territories caught up in the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Membership in this hybrid confessional group ultimately became a key marker of ethnic identity for stateless Slavs like my grandparents in borderlands ruled by Orthodox Russia or the Catholic nations of Poland, Austria, and Hungary.

The Ukrainian Greek Catholics were a special case. Stalin may have dismissed the pope for having no military divisions, but the Kremlin was suspicious of this “Latinized” Orthodox faith community in the west Ukrainian regions it annexed after World War II. It orchestrated a one-sided merger of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches in 1946 with Ukrainian property passing to the Moscow Patriarchate. The outlawed church managed to function underground for close to forty-five years, regaining its legal status only in 1989 in Mikhail Gorbachev’s campaign to liberalize the Soviet system.

During a heroic half-century in hiding, priests and deacons of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church learned the tricks of spy craft to conceal their clandestine worship services. Firemen proved especially suitable candidates for ordination, since their work schedules afforded blocks of free time to study in secret seminaries. The church’s sacred art holdings had been confiscated, and aesthetic issues were not on the curriculum. As I would hear during my time in Lviv: “When you are struggling to keep an accident victim alive you don’t fuss over how they look.”

The rehabilitation of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church sparked a conflict over confiscated property. Ground zero was Lviv’s landmark Saint George’s Cathedral, the mother church of Greek Catholics, reconsecrated by the Russian Orthodox. I had gotten an earful from an embittered band of Greek Catholic babushkas encamped in protest outside the church on my first visit to the city. It was returned to them. As the new majority faith in Lviv, Greek Catholics also took over historic Roman Catholic sanctuaries—once warehouses, state archives, and a museum of atheism—with Counter-Reformation decor not entirely suited to Orthodox worship.

PLATE 9. Lyuba Yatskiv. Sophia of Christ , 2015. Acrylic on gessoed wood. 21 1/2 x 23 1/2 inches.

Soon after arriving in Lviv, I wander into the former Bernardine Church, now the Church of Saint Andrew of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Order of Saint Basil. Saints, angels, and precariously perched putti struggle for cloud space in a trompe-l’oeil ceiling fresco of the kind you would expect in a baroque interior. Then, I spy something new and disturbingly out of place on a huge pilaster to the left of the altar: a framed, tri-color Saint Faustina Christ of Mercy reproduction print and, just below it, a white porcelain Madonna encircled by blue and yellow day-glo lights. The mass-market artifacts are in such appallingly bad taste I feel an odd compulsion to revisit them, like the scene of a horrible traffic accident.

Located a short walk from Market Square in the old Armenian quarter of Lviv, the two small storefront rooms of the Iconart gallery become my congenial home base for exploring the sacred art scene. Iconart is the primary venue in Lviv for the new style of iconography, having hosted close to ninety shows in eight years. Exhibitions like Unfading Flower: The Folk Tradition in Modern Iconography have combined the old and the new . Others are quirky and modern. The Light in the Darkness show invited visitors to view icons in a darkened room with flashlights. I have arrived just in time for the opening of the solo exhibit of Natalya Rusetska, one of the icon-makers whose works I have admired online.

I need answers, first about all the Latin Catholic kitsch art I see in Greek Catholic churches. Ivanka Krypyakevych-Dymyd, a contemporary icon-maker whose solo show launched the Iconart gallery, pours me a bracing glass of red wine (newly arrived in a plastic jug from Odessa) and goes off to find a family heirloom in her attic studio that will explain everything. The photo album she shows me once belonged to her grandfather, a priest in the underground church. It is filled with dozens of holy cards of first communions, good shepherds, and sacred hearts of Jesus and Mary in such a syrupy-sentimental, Saint-Sulpice style that I am relieved to see at least one bad reproduction of Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son .

For a faith community in hiding, these small-format, mass-produced religious images—passed from hand to hand, slipped into pockets, and concealed between book pages—filled in for lost icons and served as documents of baptisms and funerals. Krypyakevych-Dymyd was fortunate to have a Soviet-era art teacher who treated iconography as a historic school of art to be studied and reworked in drawing assignments. Such encounters with lost sacred imagery were rare in the underground years. Two generations of clandestine Greek Catholics entered freedom largely ignorant of their cultural heritage and emotionally bonded to bad art.

As I listen to Krypyakevych-Dymyd retell recent history, the epigraph to a favorite novel, E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End , comes to mind: “Only connect.” A faith as rooted in tradition as Ukrainian Greek Catholicism cannot move forward without looking back to its past, but when historical ties have been as ruthlessly cut as they were in the Soviet period, the search for connecting links among the frayed loose ends can be done in a deliberate and selective way. Perhaps, contemporary Greek Catholics now have the rarest of all historical opportunities—a chance to recreate a different kind of sacred art for themselves. This must surely be the mission of the new iconographers.

I try out my theory in Iconart circles during my week in Lviv, experiencing again the kitchen-table conversation culture I had enjoyed as a Moscow journalist in the perestroika years, when impassioned debates on the future of reform were always fueled by food and drink. Talk is served up this time with stuffed cabbage and flavored vodka in an old monastery beer cellar, and with finger food and village moonshine at the backyard screening of photos from a local installation artist’s recent visit to the Venice Biennale. A few of my hosts insist, at first, on speaking broken English or Ukrainian in translation, but our lingua franca soon becomes Russian.

PLATE 10. Natalya Rusetska. Crucifixion , 2017. Egg tempera on gessoed wood. 11 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches.

All agree that something must be done. “We are Catholic but not Roman, Orthodox but not Russian” seems to be the consensus view of where to set new sacred cultural boundaries. Some consider the fifteenth century to be the golden age of their inherited Byzantine tradition. Others think contemporary icon-makers should pay less attention to copy books and historical prototypes and work with the earliest Christian symbols of the catacombs. Taras Lozynsky, an art collector who paints icons on glass, talks about “going all the way back to the Gospels” to ensure that any new visual aesthetic is grounded in the Christian faith of its art-makers.

This is heady stuff for a visitor from a world where religious images are largely treated as fashion accessories, decorative but not essential to church life. I also need to be reminded that icons are not just beautiful objects for a collection. Trained as a watercolorist, iconographer Ulyana Tomkevych makes sacred images with a subtle, pleasing color palette, neither fifteenth-century nor ultramodern in style, incorporating details from Ukrainian folk art. Her rule of thumb in icon-making is whether she can pray before her finished pieces. “Icons fulfill a function,” she tells me. “You can design a beautiful chair but you have to be able to sit in it.”

Holy images in a uniform style line the walls of the art studio at the seminary campus of the Ukrainian Catholic University, where Solomia Tymo directs the Radruzh Icon Painting School. She explains how the chemical analysis of pigments in fifteenth-century icons has helped modern iconographers to revive a national style of sacred art-making characterized by bright colors and “the joy of Christian living.” Students work from photo enlargements of historic prototypes, beginning with studies of angels. Our conversation is interrupted by the arrival of a Vatican visitor interested in an icon. There is no need for me to ask Tymo what she thinks of holy images that can be recognized as the work of individual artists who sign their panels.

To learn about the new iconography, I go to the Lviv National Academy of Arts, making my way along dimly lit Soviet-era corridors with squeaking wooden slats to the sacral art department, where the director (and icon-maker), Roman Vasylyk, ushers me into a room filled floor to ceiling with year-end student art projects in an anything but standardized style. The six-year study program, begun in 1995, ensures that future sacred-art makers graduate with a hands-on knowledge of traditional icon painting with tempera on wood, life drawing and plein air painting, fresco and graffito work on plaster, encaustic painting, mosaics, stained glass, and iconostasis design.

The brother of a Ukrainian Greek Catholic bishop, Vasylyk taught himself iconography and made antimins for the underground church out of silk printed with images of the descent from the cross. These consecrated panels of cloth served in place of altars in clandestine celebrations of the Eucharist. The work was so secret that he could not even tell his wife. Vasylyk and his onetime teacher, Ukrainian modernist Karlo Zvirynsky, recognized the crisis that would come for Greek Catholics in the visual arts once the church was legalized. They pushed the new sacral art project through the Kyiv bureaucracy, where leftover communist apparatchiki kept wondering why a religious art program was necessary “to learn how to draw heads.”

Vasylyk and I meet again at the Iconart gallery for the opening of the Rusetska solo show, where he has a few congratulatory words for this 2008 graduate of his department. In Agape: From Creation to Salvation, Rusetska depicts the first six days of creation on muted panels of geometric shapes and delicately sketched figurative forms. The seventh day is illustrated by an ethereally refined icon of Christ in glory, leading to imagery of the passion. The twinned themes of Christ as maker and redeemer of the universe come together in a crucifixion scene set among the wonders of creation [see Plate 10]. Her seemingly weightless images combine the intimate mark-making of manuscript miniatures with the abstract iconography of Polish modernist Jerzy Nowosielski [see Image issue 61].

Tram no. 8 takes me southeast from the city center to the Soviet-era residential district of Sykhiv in my search for a church building which by all accounts is the best example of new Greek Catholic architecture in Lviv. With its five gilded domes and pure-white walls, the Church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos stands out against a backdrop of matchbox-modernist housing blocks that are prime examples of how less is often just less. Canadian-Ukrainian architect Radoslav Zuk has combined variations on the egg, the cube, and the tube in an understated contemporary church design whose dimensions conform to the ancient golden ratio. Theology meets geometry in contours both strange and familiar [see Plate 12].

PLATE 11. Sviatoslav Vladyka. King of Glory , 2015. Mixed media on gessoed wood. 15 3/4 x 11 inches.

Iconographer Sviatoslav Vladyka waits by the entrance under a plaque commemorating Pope John Paul II’s visit to the newly built church in 2001. He guides me through the wall paintings and mosaics he designed for the interior [see Plate 13]. Looking up at three tiers of images on the sanctuary walls—Christ and the angels, the apostles and prophets, and the festival days of the church calendar—I am enveloped in diffused light that is channeled down rectangular tower wells from slit windows and clerestories under the five domes. It reflects off countless golden tesserae in the mosaics of the apse and the ovoid-shaped cupolas. Their placement, Vladyka tells me, was calibrated with state-of-the-art computer imaging.

Behind the altar, Vladyka placed a red-and-gold mosaic of the Mother of God with hands raised in prayer, an homage to the eleventh-century Virgin Orans in the mother of all Ukrainian churches, the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv. His wall paintings in understated tones of gray, blue, coral, and gold are pure art deco in their streamlined forms, easy to read from ground level while remaining visually harmonious. The onetime student of the National Academy’s sacral art department reserves more radical holy imagery for individual icons like his minimalist King of Glory, where the features of the suffering Christ appear as a photonegative imprint on what might be a Kazimir Malevich geometric study in black, white, and red [see Plate 11].

Lyuba Yatskiv, the maker of the modern icon that brought me to Lviv, is now working on the interior decoration of the Holy Wisdom Church on the new campus of the Ukrainian Catholic University, another important commission for the new iconographers. We talk about the ancient theme of Sophia (Greek for wisdom) depicted in one of her icons in my collection [see Plate 9]. Holy Wisdom often takes feminine form in sacred art. In Yatskiv’s version, Sophia is a crowned angel with the features of a woman, encountering Christ at the Eucharistic table. For Yatskiv, the sacred pair embody the male and female dimensions of God, who, as creator of the cosmos made humans “in the image of God…male and female he created them.”

Yatskiv believes this is one icon “women will understand.” The high proportion of women in the Iconart listings led me to wonder if there might be a feminist school of iconography emerging in Lviv. There is certainly a gender gap in student enrollment in the National Academy’s sacral art department and Radruzh Icon Painting School, with women outnumbering men. The reason I am given has a decidedly patriarchal clang. Women follow sacred art “vocations,” while men pursue careers in digital design. The new freedom to develop individual styles and sign finished pieces has given women who were always anonymous icon-makers the chance to come out of the shadows and be recognized.

Innovations on historic prototypes, like Yatskiv’s Holy Wisdom icon, are welcome at the Iconart gallery, but not always so well received by conservative Greek Catholics who prefer their sacred art in the Radruzh School style or as contemporary Catholic kitsch. As a founding mother of the new iconography, Krypyakevych-Dymyd met head-on the first wave of hostility from post-underground faith communities who dismantled her icon screens because the images were considered too different, rejections she describes as “my wounds.” Acceptance is coming with time, but Yatskiv is criticized for her unconventional use of color and dynamic depictions of holy beings who, it is thought, ought to be presented as eternally unchanging.

I was not surprised to learn that Russian bloggers launched an internet attack against the Yatskiv icon of the Mother of God with prophets given by the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Paris to Notre Dame Cathedral in 2013. It hangs side by side with a modern copy of the historic Virgin of Vladimir presented by Patriarch Alexy II of the Russian Orthodox Church. One self-styled art critic claimed that in contrast to the serene Vladimir Virgin the “infernal” color palette and expressionistic manipulation of figures in the Ukrainian icon incited violence! While the battle of the Blessed Mothers may rage in cyberspace, the Yatskiv icon has already won acceptance by the people of Paris, as witnessed by the signs of wear from the touch of praying pilgrims.

PLATE 12. Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos. Lviv, Ukraine. Architect: Radoslav Zuk.

Ivanka Demchuk, a promising twenty-something iconographer, and her husband, Arsen Bereza, who makes sacred art from found objects, stop by Iconart when I am there. Demchuk has brought a painted panel showing Christ before Pilate [see Plate 14]. It was supposed to be the first image in a Stations of the Cross cycle commissioned by a Roman Catholic community in Poland, but was rejected by the parish priest as “too Orthodox.” The painting is astonishing in its sense of transcendence. The mockers of Christ occupy a sepia-toned moment of sacred history, torn like a scroll to reveal the eternal whiteness of divine purpose underlying human affairs. Prejudice is alive and well, it seems, on both sides of the great divide. What is unwelcome in Warsaw will find a worthy place in my collection.

One person who can put art and religion in present day Lviv into proper perspective for me is Myroslav Marynovych, a Soviet-era human rights activist once sentenced to seven years of hard labor and the grandson of a Greek Catholic priest. Now vice-rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University, Marynovych believes the initial shock of freedom for the underground church was followed by a time of triumphalism, when post-communist civil liberties were viewed as a means of defending “us from them.” When the now toppled pro-Moscow government in Kyiv showed favoritism to the Russian Orthodox Church, other confessional groups rallied together in support of the Revolution of Dignity, realizing that religious pluralism protected the interests of all.

As we sip coffee in the new university campus cafeteria with its wall of windowpanes, I look out at the new Holy Wisdom Church in the inner courtyard, where Yatskiv is now working on the interior art. I wonder how she will get on. To my eyes, the building is a disappointing pastiche of traditional onion-domed Orthodox sanctuaries with a nod to rural Ukrainian wooden churches. Marynovych was a member of the committee that approved the final design. He tells me they began with a very modern concept. Once everyone in the group had removed all the features in the original plan they did not like, they ended with what he wryly terms “the golden mean of all our preferences.”

Marynovych compares the process of change in post-communist Ukraine to the biblical story of the wandering of the Hebrew people in the wilderness, where entry into the promised land was only granted to a generation that had not sojourned in Egypt. “We have passed twenty years,” he says, “and we have another twenty years ahead of us.” He wonders as the country draws closer to the European Union whether the Ukrainian Greek Catholic clergy are sufficiently prepared to give moral guidance in dealing with conflicting western values without resorting to the harsh, defensive rhetoric they are hearing these days from their brethren in the Russian Church.

Ukrainian Greek Catholics can claim one truly exceptional cleric to serve as a moral compass in changing times. The son of Polonized Ukrainian aristocrats, Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky guided the church for over forty years, through two World Wars and the Soviet and German occupations, dying after the Red Army entered Lviv for the second time in 1944. Drawing on his family wealth, the metropolitan founded a health clinic and hospital, a land mortgage bank, rural cultural education societies, and a museum and art school, enough accomplishments to fill a delightful A to я Sheptytsky alphabet book for Ukrainian schoolchildren.

PLATE 13. Interior of the Church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos. Designer: Sviatoslav Vladyka.

Sheptytsky has one blot on his record. In the opening days of the Nazi invasion of 1941, he welcomed the Germans as liberators from the Soviets, who had slaughtered over four thousand political prisoners before abandoning Lviv. The metropolitan reversed his position when the new reign of terror began, pleading on behalf of Galicia’s Jews in letters to Hitler and Himmler and forbidding Greek Catholics to commit political murder in his 1942 pastoral epistle, “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” With his brother Klementy, a Greek Catholic monk, Sheptytsky found safe havens for Jews in churches and monasteries. Klementy is counted with the “Righteous Among the Nations” at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial; Andrey is not.

Pope Francis issued a “decree of heroic virtue” for Sheptytsky in 2015, opening his path to sainthood. In the words of Bishop Borys Gudziak, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Eparch of Paris, Sheptytsky lived in a house of the Lord with “a high roof, open doors, and open windows”—and plenty of art on the walls to inspire the new iconographers. He not only gathered together the icons, dating back to the twelfth century, that make up the core of the Ukrainian liturgical art collection at the Lviv National Museum, he also provided financial support for leading artists of his time, including the fin-de-siècle Viennese stylist Modest Sosenko; the art nouveau–influenced Petro Kholodny; the symbolist and Nabis disciple Oleksa Novakivsky; and Mykhailo Boichuk, a modernist, neo-Byzantine painter murdered in the Executed Renaissance.

The metropolitan is still a vital presence in Lviv’s art scene, peering out magisterially from a banner near Saint George’s Cathedral, announcing the plein air children’s art festival , Golden Easel: In the Footsteps of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky. Over a hundred art-makers, aged under eighteen, gathered in the summer of 2017 in Lviv for what organizers described as a “monumental painting-praying” event. Each youth contributed an image to a canvas mural on the theme “Art Wave of Peace,” extending down a slope from the church to the city center. There are plenty of aspiring new iconographers among the youthful painters, judging from all the Madonnas, angels, churches, and religious processions I see. Such a public display of sacred imagery would provoke lawsuits in the US!

Seeking the assistance of saints through prayer with holy images comes naturally to Ukrainian Greek Catholics. I feel awkward at first when Krypyakevych-Dymyd tells me that as the son of a baptized Byzantine Catholic I should find myself an intercessor to help in my mission of collecting and promoting contemporary sacred art. Who, she says, could be a better mentor than the now Venerable Andrey Sheptytsky? On impulse, I cross some inner East-West border of my own and ask her to make me an icon of the metropolitan. Before I leave Lviv, we meet to look over sketches she has made from photos of Sheptytsky. Now I am committed.

PLATE 14. Ivanka Demchuk. Christ before Pilate , 2017. Mixed media on gessoed wood. 19 3/4 x 15 3/4 inches.

Ukrainian Greek Catholics often feel impatient with the Vatican’s slow process of making saints. Soon after Pope John Paul II was canonized, sacral art department director Vasylyk made an icon of the pope, bordered by portraits of twenty-six Greek Catholics who gave their lives for the faith in the modern era, all beatified by the Polish pontiff on his 2001 visit. I was intrigued to learn that Vasylyk’s students are taught how to create icon-like images from live models. Ukrainian soldiers and the Heavenly Hundred protesters have already been incorporated into an icon above the altar in the Greek Catholic chapel of the Protection of the Mother of God where the owner of the Iconart gallery worships.

In this city that has passed between the powers-that-were seven times in recent history, there is a sign posted above an information board outside my favorite Catholic kitsch art church, where a map shows Russian tank and troop positions in the eastern war zone. The text, in Ukrainian and English on a blue-yellow background, reads: Pray for Ukraine . The urgent appeal for divine help resonates among all Ukrainian Greek Catholics (and their God-fearing friends), whether they seek the intercession of the Venerable Andrey Sheptytsky through a contemporary icon, Saint George the Dragon Slayer through a copy of a fifteenth-century original, or the Virgin Mary through a day-glo-light-encircled ceramic statuette. They have more than enough modern martyrs to remember.

More contemporary Ukrainian icons are on the Iconart website:  www.iconart.com.ua

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Tags: iconography John A. Kohan Lviv Ukraine visual art essay

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War-damaged buildings as a canvas: Banksy’s art in Ukraine

The anonymous artist Banksy has confirmed to have made seven new graffiti artworks in the ruins of what used to be Ukrainian cities (Instagram, 2022). Banksy is known for his hint of criticism at the current state of the world in his artworks and photos of his work tend to be shared on the internet and create discussions online. As the war in Ukraine continues to take place, all of us can follow the war online through the use of digital platforms and social media. In this paper, I will analyze the murals done by the artist Banksy in Ukrainian cities and examine how his art offers a critical reflection of the Russo-Ukrainian war.

To do so, I will first provide background information on the Russo-Ukrainian war and its effects, after which I will investigate who the artist Banksy is. Then I will take a look at the murals Banksy has done in Ukraine and examine how art can offer a critical reflection of our present day. I will conclude this paper by diving into the deeper meaning of Banksy’s art and how it offers spectators a chance to reflect on the war.

The Russo-Ukrainian war and its effects

President Vladimir Putin of Russia has stated in his essay On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians (2021) that Belarusians, Ukrainians, and Russians "are one people" and that "true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia" (Putin, 2021). Putin announced the war on the 24th of February as it is a "special military operation" aiming at the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine (Osborn & Nikolskaya, 2022).

On the 24th of February, Russia invaded Ukraine in a dramatic escalation of the war that has been ongoing since 2014. Both sides have suffered masses of deaths, but numbers remain unclear. The Russo-Ukrainian war has had effects all over the world and has caused Europe’s largest refugee crisis since the Second World War (Pita & Sánchez Costa, 2022) as millions of Ukrainians are fleeing the country. A global effect of the Russian invasion is the result of food shortages (Barbaro, 2022).

Next to global food shortages and Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II, thousands of Ukrainians and Russians have lost their lives at the front and in cities completely bombed to ashes (The Guardian, 2022). Thousands of people must hide in shelters to escape the bombs that destroy entire neighborhoods (The Guardian, 2022).

The anonymous artist Banksy and his public statements

To understand the political messages in the artworks Banksy did on the Russo-Ukrainian war that I will analyze further in this paper, we first have to understand who the artist called Banksy is and examine his background to be able to relate his art to the war.

Banksy is a pseudonym for the anonymous England-based street artist, political activist, and film director. His real name and identity remain unconfirmed and subject to speculation. He is mostly known for his series Girl with Balloon  which are multiple graffiti artworks showing a girl reaching for a red balloon in the shape of a heart. In 2018, a copy of the Girl with Balloon artwork was auctioned for more than 1 million UK pounds (Lawless, 2018). Right after the artwork was sold, a hidden shredder built into the frame activated and began shredding the work of art. The partially shredded Girl with Balloon was then renamed by Banksy as Love is in the Bin  (Martinez, 2018). The shredded work live performed has been named Banksy’s most famous artwork, as it is "one of the most widely recognizable images created by Banksy" (Banksy Explained, n.d.).

Banksy creates "urban street art images that respond to a given context and contain some form of social commentary" (Urbanist, 2007). These graffiti works spark discussion and create public debate about what art is, and what its meaning and value are. Because graffiti is vandalism and therefore illegal, Banksy stays anonymous. Although he started in his hometown of Bristol, England, his works have shifted from being locally subversive to globally revolutionary, and his works appear in different parts of the world as well. Banksy has garnered fame for his street works, "which often combine spray paint and stenciling techniques with commercial, political and contemporary imagery, infused with ironic social commentary and humor" (Banksy Explained, n.d.).

Banksy is not new to refugee and warzone artworks. He has painted Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, as a Syrian migrant on a wall in Calais, France, where a camp is set up for refugees from the Middle East (Ellis-Petersen, 2022). This was meant to be a statement about the fact that Apple only exists because "they allowed in a young man from Homs" (Ellis-Petersen, 2022), referencing Jobs’ Syrian background. Banksy has also done works in the Gaza Strip, and later "auctioning paintings to raise funds for Palestinian causes" (McKernan, 2022).

Art as criticism

Art can offer a critical reflection of the present in the contemporary world. As I have explained, the artist Banksy is known for his social and political commentary on the present state of the world in his artworks and now with seven new artworks in Ukraine, he has made another statement of the recent events happening in the Western world. I will introduce the graffiti artworks by Banksy in the bombed cities of Ukraine as they reflect criticism of Banksy to the world’s current state and the war happening in Ukraine.

Banksy’s art in Ukraine

After a series of murals appeared in the city of Borodyanka near the capital Kyiv, it was speculated that Banksy was in Ukraine (Tondo, 2022). Banksy revealed his latest artwork when confirming his whereabouts with a post on Instagram (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Banksy confirms his art on Instagram

The post shows Banksy’s location in the caption, as it says "Borodyanka, Ukraine". The mural shows a woman practicing a handstand on the remnants of a bombed building.

A second post on Instagram shows a video of Banksy in which seven artworks can be identified, which was a reupload from a video titled Ukraine  shared on Banksy’s YouTube channel. The video shows him painting the walls but has as its main focus the context of the art; "which is ruins that were caused by humans, by neighbors, by a nation that liked to say they are brothers" (Dominauskaite, 2022). The video also included short conversations with locals sharing their experiences and feelings about the Russo-Ukrainian war (YouTube, 2022).

The most expressive mural of Banksy in Ukraine depicts a young boy throwing Putin to the floor while practicing judo (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: A judo match

The graffiti artwork is interesting as it portrays Vladimir Putin in a black belt being thrown to the floor by a young boy. Putin’s honorary black belt was revoked by World Taekwondo because of the Russo-Ukrainian war (Diaz, 2022) and no championships will be held in Belarus or Russia, as well as that "no national flags or anthems from Russia or its ally Belarus will be displayed or played during the organization’s events" (Diaz, 2022).

Where the young boy comes from is made clear as we watch the YouTube video on Banksy’s official channel called banksyfilm . A Ukrainian woman with her young child is being interviewed and says that a bomb has fallen on that place where "many people died" (YouTube, 2022). She then explains that her child used to go to this kindergarten. The young boy is therefore a representative of the kindergarten that used to be in this place, the building that is now not more than a ruin. Through this representation of the young boy playing the judo match with President Putin of Russia, it is made clear that the war is being condemned by Banksy and shows the destructive nature of war.

Figure 3: The normality of life

The destructive part of war is yet again represented in these three murals (Figure 3) that depict the normality of the lives of Ukrainians before the war. The first mural shows an older man taking a bath; however, the graffiti artwork is on a building that is now unlivable as it is completely destroyed by bombs. Banksy’s mural on the normality of life is a representation of the way in which the daily lives of the citizens of Ukraine have been turned upside down, with citizens not being able to live in their own homes anymore, and therefore having to flee their home cities.

The second and third murals show two gymnasts practicing. We can interpret these murals in various ways. It could mean that the young people of Ukraine see their dreams of competing in the Olympics one day getting destroyed. Another interpretation is that the girls "represent the Ukrainian nation trying to keep their feet on the ground while Earth is shattering under them" (Dominauskaite, 2022). Either way, it is up to the spectator to interpret the art and give it meaning.

Figure 4: Children playing

Figure 4 shows a mural of two small children playing on what are called roadblocks. These roadblocks function as a way to block the roads for tanks and other vehicles. The Ukrainian citizens have used them in order to keep the Russian enemy out of their cities (Tondo, 2022). The two children represent the innocent among the Ukrainian citizens, as well as "the crushed dreams of Ukrainians, their strength and resilience as well as the desire to keep fighting" (Dominauskaite, 2022). It also shows how in every terrible thing, in this case, the war, there is always room for playfulness, joy, and hope.

A critical analysis of art

These murals in Ukraine show that Banksy has a tendency to make graffiti artworks with a statement, whether political or societal. Spectators of his work are being confronted with a message and can interpret this message through the context of the artwork, as well as the current state of the world. By staying anonymous, Banksy allows his artworks to speak for themselves, as "he feels his identity might distract or retract from what the focus should be: his work, and the statements he is making" (Banksy Explained, n.d.).

The meaning of Banksy’s art in Ukraine

We can ask ourselves why it is important that a famous artist like Banksy is paying attention to the war in Europe. The Russo-Ukrainian war is the first large-scale war of aggression in Europe since World War II (Diehn, 2022). And as I have mentioned before, the Russo-Ukrainian war has had its effects not only in the Balkan but in the whole world, as there are food shortages that affect people everywhere. The war has been the cause of Europe’s largest refugee crisis since the Second World War and thousands of soldiers and citizens on both sides have lost their lives.  

Banksy helped the country of Ukraine at the beginning of the war by selling one of his anti-war pieces painted in 2005 for more than €90,000 (Dominauskaite, 2022). He donated the money to a children’s hospital in the capital Kyiv (Dominauskaite, 2022). By making his art in the ruins of Ukrainian cities, he not only shows what Russia has done to Ukraine, but he also opens up the debate about war and shows his support for Ukraine.  

In short, Banksy’s art can be seen as a political statement about the Russo-Ukrainian war and its destructiveness, as well as its effects on millions of citizens of Ukraine. I have examined the murals done by Banksy in Ukraine as an example of criticism of the current state of the world and I have analyzed how Banksy sparks discussion with his works. These Ukrainian murals serve as a starting point for opening up the debate about war and its consequences. Through digital media, all of us can not only follow the events happening at the front, but also see a message in art like Banksy’s and form an opinion through his statements. To conclude, Banksy’s murals can be seen as a prime example of how art can offer a critical reflection of the present.

Banksy Explained (n.d.) About Banksy . Banksyexplained.com

Barbaro, M. (2022) How the War in Ukraine is Creating a Global Food Crisis. The Daily.

Diaz, J. (2022) World Taekwondo strips Russia’s Vladimir Putin of his honorary black belt . NPR.org

Diehn, S. A. (2022) 5 ways the war changed the world. DW.com

Dominauskaite, J. (2022) Banksy Comes Back with 7 New Wall Arts in Ukraine and They Touched People’s Hearts . Bored Panda.

Ellis-Petersen, H. (2015) Banksy uses Steve Jobs artwork to highlight refugee crisis . The Guardian.

Lawless, J. (2018) Banksy artwork self-destructs just after $1.4 million sale . AP News.

Martinez, G. (2018) ‘It Appears We Just Got Banksy-ed.’ Art Piece Self Destructs After Being Sold for Over $1 Million. Yahoo News.

McKernan, B. (2022) Lost Banksy piece sprayed in Palestine reappears in Tel Aviv gallery. The Guardian.

Osborn, A., Nikolskaya, P. (2022) Russia’s Putin authorizes ‘special military operation’ against Ukraine . Reuters.

Pita, A., Sánchez Costa, R. (2022) Ukrainian exodus could be Europe’s biggest refugee crisis since World War II . El Pais.com

Putin, V. (2021) On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians . Kremlin.ru

Tondo, L. (2022) Banksy artwork appears on damaged building in Ukraine. The Guardian.

Urbanist (2007) Banksy Paradox: 7 Sides of the Most Infamous Street Artist. Weburbanist.com

YouTube (2022) Ukraine . banksyfilm.

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Ukrainian sculptor who fled Kyiv accepted into Royal Society of British Artists

Alex Lidagovsky was forced to leave Ukraine with his family when his studio was bombed during the Russian invasion

A Ukrainian sculptor who fled to the UK when his studio was destroyed has been accepted into the Royal Society of British Artists.

Alex Lidagovsky was forced to leave Kyiv with his wife, Dasha Nepochatova, and 16-year-old stepdaughter after the Russian invasion began on 24 February 2022.

Speaking to the PA news agency, the sculptor said his friends had sent him photos of his bombed studio. Lidagovsky, whose words were translated by his wife, said: “When we were leaving Ukraine to save our daughter, we never thought it would be for so long.

“Now, because I’m so far away from my country and it looks like I live another life, I try not to think about it, to deny it, to drive this pain into the depths of my consciousness and give myself more time to reflect on it.”

He went on: “Starting from scratch here in the UK with the status of a refugee, it was very important for me to stay in the profession because I felt like I lost my voice and my language, so it was important for me not to lose my professional identity.

“When I arrived here, I just felt emptiness because I was cut off from my previous life.

“Compared to Ukraine, I knew the market and society there, but I was invisible and nobody knew me here, so the first step was to show up to let people see me and become visible.”

The honorary membership of the Royal Society of British Artists was an exciting and unexpected surprise, he said. “I also found out the news on the same day as my birthday, so it felt like a birthday gift.”

Lidagovsky, who was able to showcase a work at the Winter Sculpture Park in Bexley , south-east London, last year, recently won one of the five residency prizes for indoor sculpture at Lucca Biennale Cartasia, the biggest event in the art world for paper art and architecture. His sculpture, Swallow Flight, will be on display in Lucca, Italy.

“The piece will be made from corrugated cardboard and the sculpture is in an acrobatic position called swallow and metaphorically shows her leg is in the past and her head is in the future, but she’s trying to balance in the present with her hands open,” he said.

Another work, Tightrope Walker, will also feature in a new public art trail commissioned by Great Yarmouth borough council, alongside nine other sculptures from other artists, in November.

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War, refugees, destruction: how Venice Biennale 2024 will reflect our era

Thousands have called for israel’s pavilion to be cancelled, a proposed palestinian exhibition was rejected, while ukraine’s pavilion deals with its ongoing war.

A performance from the Revolutionary Letter #7 programme by Dar Jacir for Art and Research Photo: Nurin Kaoud, courtesy of the artists

Exactly a month after the selection committee chose the artist Ruth Patir for the Israeli pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale, Hamas carried out its atrocities in Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 240 people hostage.

For two weeks after 7 October, “we were paralysed, frozen in fear and shock”, says Mira Lapidot, the chief curator of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and the co-curator of the pavilion, with Tamar Margalit. “But then we decided we had to go ahead,” Lapidot says. “Art is not a luxury, even if it sometimes feels that way in times of war and horror. It is central to building understanding between people.”

The Biennale often mirrors war and geopolitical tensions—in part because of its century-old structure, long criticised as anachronistic, with national pavilions. Before the last Biennale, the artists and curator chosen for the Russian pavilion withdrew after the invasion of Ukraine. In an era when war is a daily reality for millions of people, it is unsurprising that conflict looks set to be a recurring theme in this edition, too.

Israel’s Modernist pavilion at the VeniceBiennale, which first opened in 1952 Riccardo Bianchini/Alamy Stock Photo

The Israeli reprisals in Gaza had claimed more than 30,000 lives by the end of February, according to Hamas health ministry figures. The devastation has extended to heritage sites and museums: as of 21 February, Unesco had verified damage to five religious sites in Gaza, ten buildings of historical and artistic interest, two depositories of moveable cultural property, one monument, one museum and three archaeological sites.

The conflict between Israel and Hamas has created rifts in the art world further afield—particularly in Germany, where several exhibitions have been cancelled because artists or curators made comments viewed by institutions as antisemitic or anti-Israel.

The Israeli pavilion at the Biennale has already been the target of an open letter calling for the exclusion of Israel from the Biennale signed by thousands of artists and cultural workers. The letter was issued at the end of February by a group called the Art Not Genocide Alliance. Italy’s culture minister, Gennaro Sangiuliano, called it “shameful” and expressed “deepest solidarity and closeness” to the state of Israel, its artists and its citizens. The Biennale said in a statement that “all countries recognised by the Italian Republic may autonomously request to participate” and it would not heed “any petition or call to exclude the participation of Israel or Iran”.

Lapidot says she is aware that protests at the Israeli pavilion are a risk. “Yes, we are Israelis, but we do not represent our government,” she says, adding that she hopes the pavilion will remind visitors that “Israel is more than [prime minister] Netanyahu on TV”. But more than anything, she says, “we are hoping desperately that the situation with the hostages and in Gaza will be alleviated soon”.

A still from Daniil Revkovskyi and Andrii Rachynskyi’s Civilians. Invasion chronicling destruction in Ukraine Courtesy of the artists

Ruth Patir’s exhibition Motherland consists of video installations that animate archaeological artefacts—female figurines dating from 800 to 600BC. “Forlorn women of a past civilisation, the figurines reach us across time, whether intact, or more often broken—remnants of bloody feuds,” the press release says.

Palestinians rebuffed

While Israel has chosen to forge ahead with its national pavilion, aspiring Palestinian participants say they have been excluded from the Biennale. Faisal Saleh, the founder of the Palestine Museum US in Woodbridge, Connecticut, started a petition after his proposal for the Collateral Events section, featuring 23 artists including some from Gaza, was rejected.

In his petition, which had collected almost 22,000 signatures in February, Saleh wrote: “The exclusion of Palestinian voices contributes to an incomplete picture that undermines efforts towards understanding and peace.”

Palestinian artists will still be represented in Venice: one of the Collateral Events projects, South West Bank—Landworks, Collective Action and Sound , is organised by Artists + Allies x Hebron in cooperation with Dar Jacir for Art and Research, which is based in Bethlehem.

One of the exhibitions in this event, Freedom Boat , will travel through the Grand Canal and around the Giardini on the opening days of the Biennale, according to a press release. Presented by a UK-based group, Artists Against Apartheid, artists on board “will lead readings, performances and other acts in the name of Palestinian solidarity”. Among the contributors is Issa Amro, a Palestinian activist.

South West Bank also includes photographs of olive trees, some more than 1,000 years old, taken by Adam Broomberg and Rafael Gonzalez in the occupied territories. The trees, “untouched for centuries, suddenly feel so precarious”, the release says.

Ongoing and future conflicts

Russia is once again a no-show at Venice. Visitors could be forgiven for thinking that Ukraine’s pavilion presentation, Net Making , describes a homely handicraft—in fact it refers to the collective weaving of camouflage nets for use in the ongoing war. The pavilion will address “the topic of otherness through personal experiences of war, emigration, and assimilation in new societies”, according to a statement.

Among the works on show, Civilians. Invasion (2023), a film by Daniil Revkovskyi and Andrii Rachynskyi, tells the story of the first days of the Russian invasion through the eyes of survivors, and is assembled from videos they found online. The artists describe it as a “horror encyclopedia, capturing the harrowing experiences people endure during a full-scale invasion”.

One geopolitical hotspot that seizes fewer headlines than Gaza or Israel is devoting its entire exhibition to war. Everyday War is the title of Taiwan’s contribution to this Biennale, a solo exhibition by Yuan Goang-Ming. A new video by the artist imagines a devastating attack in Yuan’s own home. “Glass shatters loudly, then warplanes fly in one after the other, destroying objects in the room,” according to a press release. “Finally, all the aircraft annihilate one another, and the whole house is left a ruin in the aftermath of battle.”

Yuan’s work “allows people to step into the psyche of what it means to live in Taiwan,” says Abby Chen, the curator of the exhibition. “Yes, it could be ten times worse than we imagine. So the artist presents that anxiety, but at the same time, I think he gives us a glimpse of a way out.”

Treated by China as a breakaway region that must be unified with its vast neighbour, democratic Taiwan has in recent months come under increasing military, economic and diplomatic pressure. Another of Yuan’s works on show in Venice, Everyday Maneuver (2018) shows the mandatory annual air-raid drills in which all Taiwanese must take part.

“Every year the artist and his family need to take shelter,” Chen says. “But you will see that the artwork shows order. It doesn’t show chaos or fear. This is something we actually don’t see that often these days—the authorities and civilians cooperating. There’s this very obvious shared understanding of being in something together.”

Districts [ edit ]

The city is divided by the River Oka into two major parts: the Upper city ( Verkhnyaya or Nagornaya chast ) on the hilly right side and the Lower city ( Nizhnyaya or Zarechnaya chast — what literally means "the part over the river") on the left bank of the river. The Upper city is the old historical part of Nizhny Novgorod, whereas the Lower city is larger, newer and consists of more industrial districts.

Understand [ edit ]

History [ edit ]

The city was founded by Grand Duke George II of Russia in 1221 at the confluence of two most important rivers of his principality, the Volga and the Oka. Its name literally means Newtown the Lower , to distinguish it from the older Novgorod . A major stronghold for border protection, Nizhny Novgorod fortress took advantage of a natural moat formed by the two rivers.

Along with Moscow and Tver, Nizhny Novgorod was among several newly founded towns that escaped Mongol devastation on account of its insignificance and grew up into important centers of Russian political life during the period of Tatar yoke. For a short period of time it was the capital of the Suzdal Principality and competed with Moscow for the power in the region. However the competition with Moscow was lost and in 1392 the city was incorporated into Muscovy. Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin was built in 1508-1511 (under supervision of the Italian fortress engineers) and became one of the strongest Russian citadels. There is a legend saying that the project was initially developed with participation of Leonardo da Vinci. However there is no documented proof of Leonardo's work for that project, the only thing the legend is based on is the striking resemblance of Leonardo's sketches and the actual Kremlin schemes. The fortress was strong enough to withstand Tatar sieges in 1520 and 1536.

In 1612, the so-called national militia , gathered by a local merchant Kuzma Minin and commanded by Knyaz Dmitry Pozharsky expelled the Polish troops from Moscow, thus putting an end to the Time of Troubles and establishing the rule of the Romanov dynasty.

In 1817, the Makaryev Monastery Fair, one of the liveliest in the world the 16th-18th centuries, was transferred to Nizhny Novgorod, which thereupon started to attract numerous visitors and by the mid-19th century it turned Nizhny Novgorod into trade capital of the Russian Empire.

Under the Soviet period, the trade connections of the city were abandoned and Nizhny Novgorod became an important industrial centre instead. During the communist time the city was closed to foreigners to safeguard the security of Soviet military research. The physicist and the Nobel laureate Andrei Sakharov was exiled there during 1980-1986 to limit his contacts with foreigners.

Climate [ edit ]

The climate in the region is humid continental and it is similar to the climate in Moscow , although colder in winter, which lasts from late November until late March with a permanent snow cover.

By car [ edit ]

Nizhny Novgorod is situated on the M7/E30 road. The road is in decent condition, although with traffic it can take anywhere from 4 to 8 hours to drive to/from Moscow .

By boat [ edit ]

Turflot [dead link] , Infoflot , and many other companies operate multi-day river cruises down the Volga from early May to the end of September.

Many companies operate passenger boat service between Moscow and Astrakhan , with stops at most cities along the Volga River.

Get around [ edit ]

By foot [ edit ].

The city centre is compact and walkable. However, there are many inclines or steps from the river banks. The bridges are not pedestrian friendly since the sidewalk is very narrow and cars drive extremely fast close to the pedestrians.

By city rail [ edit ]

The City Rail connects areas where there are no metro lines. Connects with the subway at the Moscow railway station. It has 2 lines: Sormovskaya and Priokskaya. The fare by train costs 28 rubles. According to the Citicard Transport Card, the fare is 26 rubles. Also by train you can get to the nearest suburb, or transfer to suburban trains to Dzerzhinsk, Bor, Semenov or Arzamas.

By bus and trolleybus [ edit ]

As of May 2017 in each district of the city there are several city bus routes. The number of trolleybus routes is much less. In one district of the city there are 1-2 trolleybus routes. Trolleybus routes are completely absent in the Leninsky city district. It is worth noting that trolleybuses do not connect the Lower City to the Upper. This is because the trolleybuses do not have enough power to climb the mountain.

The trolleybus network is divided into 3 parts:

• The upper trolleybus network (it unites all three districts - Nizhegorodsky, Sovetsky and Prioksky) with a turning circle on the Minin Square, near the Kremlin.
• The lower trolleybus network (connects Kanavinsky, Moskovsky and Sormovsky districts)
• The Avtozavod trolleybus network (connects all the distant sleeping microdistricts among themselves)

By tram [ edit ]

Throughout the city, land trams run. The longest route of all is 417. It connects the outskirts of Avtozavodsky district with the Moskovsky Rail Terminal. The journey takes about 1 hour and 20 minutes. The route passes through the sleeping areas (approximately 75% of the way). Also in remote neighborhoods there are routes of several more trams, but in most cases, they are in the Upper City. By the way, you can reach there by tram 27 or 10 directly from the Moscow railway station.

By marshrutka [ edit ]

Marshrutkas do not stop at every stop. To indicate your intention to exit a marshrutka, press a button and to indicate your intention to enter a marshrutka en-route, you need to wave your hand.

By bicycle [ edit ]

Nizhny Novgorod has not very developed bicycle infrastructure. Special bike paths exist only on the Upper-Volga and Lower-Volga embankments and on Rozhdestvenskaya Street.

The upper city is very hilly and full of steep inclines and even many locals will get off their bicycles and push their bikes up the hill by foot. Drivers can be reckless and pose a danger to cyclists. The roads can also be icy during the winter. City cyclists solve this problem by replacing summer tires with winter tires.

Also, in 2017 the implementation of a new integrated transport scheme of the city began. It provides for a large number of bicycle paths in the Upper City (including on Bolshaya Pokrovskaya Street) and in the Lower City.

See [ edit ]

Monuments [ edit ]

• Monument to Valery Chkalov, the famous test pilot of the 1930s, known for his ultra long flight from Moscow to Washington State via the North Pole.
• Maxim Gorky, at the square named after him
• Alexander Pushkin (at the entrance to the Theatre of Opera and Ballet)
• 56.327974 44.001982 26 Prince George and Saint Simon of Suzdal , The Kremlin, St. Michael the Archangel Cathedral . Monument to the founders of the city of Prince Yuri II of Vladimir (also George Vsevolodovich) and Simeon of Suzdal ( updated Jun 2017 )

Religious [ edit ]

• Pechersky Ascencion Monastery , near Sennaya Square a couple miles east of downtown, halfway down the slope to Volga. With a cathedral and several churches surrounded by a restored stone wall, the monastery is the seat of the archbishops of Nizhny Novgorod.
• A big variety of other churches and convents.

Buy [ edit ]

Sleep [ edit ]

All hotels and hostels offer free Wi-Fi and many have computer terminals. Almost all accept credit cards. Hotels and hostels will usually provide a visa invitation and registration for an additional fee.

Connect [ edit ]

Phone [ edit ].

For information on purchasing a SIM card in Russia, see Russia#Connect .

Note that Nizhny Novgorod is in the Volga region zone, and SIM cards purchased elsewhere, such as in Moscow or Saint Petersburg , may be subject to roaming charges.

There are payphones in the streets; however, you can only buy phone-cards in the post offices and in a few newspaper kiosks.

Internet [ edit ]

Free WiFi is available in most hotels, shopping malls, university buildings, restaurants and cafes, the airport as well as several metro stations. There is also free public WiFi on B. Pokrovskaya street.

Cope [ edit ]

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The U.N. Security Council’s Default Is Deadlock

Countries have used the body’s impasse over conflicts in gaza and ukraine to advance their own interests..

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In May 1954, less than a decade after the founding of the United Nations, then-Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold concluded an address to the University of California, Berkeley by asserting that the organization “was not created in order to bring us to heaven but in order to save us from hell.” His words now seem a clear-eyed description of both the world body’s raison d’être and its limitations: The U.N. cannot necessarily prevent wars, but it may be able to disincentivize their worst excesses.

The collegiate audience would have understood “hell” as referring to the horrors of World War II. Hammarskjold also spoke just one year after the end of the Korean War, the first conflict in which the U.N. took a side, supporting South Korea. The Korean armistice created the Demilitarized Zone, freeing those south of the line from the invading communists but trapping those north under a despotic regime. The decision was seen as preferable to allowing the entire Korean Peninsula to fall.

Today, the Security Council, the U.N. organ with primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security, finds itself at an impasse. Council members are often unable to agree on when to make demands of member states, and when the council does make demands, they are seldom implemented. This institutional paralysis harms U.N. credibility and affects the conflicts currently dominating headlines—in Gaza and Ukraine—and those raging just offscreen, such as in Haiti and Sudan.

Some world powers, chief among them Russia, are using the deadlock on the Security Council to deflect from their own actions—distractions that can quickly reverberate around the world. Both Israel and the Palestinians have recently used the platform to hone their messaging on the war in Gaza. Palestine’s permanent observer to the U.N. has accused Israel of exaggerating some details of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, when militants killed around 1,200 people in southern Israel and abducted 253 others. Israel has invited diplomats, politicians, and journalists (including this reporter) to view footage from the attack.

Nearly six months into the war, the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry estimates that some 32,000 Palestinians have been killed, many of them women and children, and many more have been seriously injured. Israel says at least 134 hostages remain in Gaza, and some are presumed dead. On March 25, after months of back and forth, the Security Council adopted a resolution, drafted by the 10 elected members of the body, demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and the unconditional release of all hostages.

The United States abstained, allowing the resolution to go through—days after Russia and China vetoed a U.S.-drafted resolution also calling for a cease-fire. (A Security Council resolution requires nine votes in favor, with no vetoes from the five permanent members.) The United States used its own veto to stop three previous Gaza cease-fire resolutions. In those cases, it cited Israel’s right to self-defense, ongoing negotiations in the Middle East, or the council’s failure to condemn the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, which Washington and other capitals consider a terrorist organization.

The competing Gaza resolutions show how, in the 70 years since Hammarskjold’s speech, the body politic that makes up the U.N. has grown further apart. This polarization disturbs the heading of the organization’s moral compass. Increasingly, the needle swings according to the interest of the dominant faction during a given crisis, which has proved useful to parties seeking to reframe public perceptions—and to nudge this needle in the direction of their choosing.

From left: U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield looks down as Algerian Ambassador Amar Bendjama and Chinese Ambassador Zhang Jun raise their hands for a “yes” vote on a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza during a Security Council meeting in New York on March 25. Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images

In the clash of wills over Gaza on the Security Council, Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, accused the 11 council members that voted for the recent U.S.-drafted resolution of “cover[ing] themselves in disgrace.” He then stated, without irony, that Russia understood its role as a founding member of the U.N. and recognized the “historical global responsibility we shoulder for the maintenance of international peace and security.” When both Russia and China vetoed the U.S. draft, it was a bit of déjà vu: Last October, the two powers vetoed a humanitarian-focused resolution on Gaza submitted by the United States.

Of course, the latest round of Security Council ping-pong has played out while Russia has a particular incentive to distract from its ongoing war in Ukraine. For her part, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Russia and China vetoed the U.S.-drafted resolution for two cynical reasons: first, she speculated, because they could not bring themselves to “condemn Hamas’s terrorist attacks on Oct. 7,” and second, because Russia and China simply didn’t want to vote for a draft written by the United States, because they “would rather see us fail than to see this council succeed.”

Meanwhile, Israel has continued its own lobbying. As months dragged on without the Security Council condemning the Oct. 7 attack, Israel’s U.N. envoy began calling on the U.N. secretary-general to resign and addressing Security Council meetings wearing a yellow Star of David. Two weeks before the council considered the latest cease-fire resolutions, Israel’s foreign minister came to New York—accompanied by family members of hostages—to speak to a Security Council meeting about a U.N. report detailing sexual violence on Oct. 7 and to demand that the council designate Hamas as a terrorist organization and impose sanctions.

Israel’s messaging has made some impact. Some countries have paused their financial support for UNRWA, the U.N. aid agency for Palestinian refugees, over Israeli accusations that it employs Hamas members, including some involved in the Oct. 7 attack. The U.N. created a working group chaired by Catherine Colonna, who was until recently France’s foreign minister, to restore confidence in the agency; she is due to release a report in April with recommendations on how to strengthen its neutrality.

People walk past the damaged Gaza City headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees on Feb. 15. AFP via Getty Images

Until recently, the fiercest tug of war on the Security Council was over Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Kyiv has now shifted its diplomatic strategy away from the U.N., two years after Moscow’s veto power blocked the Security Council from condemning the invasion. In February 2022 and 2023, the 193-member General Assembly twice voted overwhelmingly to demand Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine—votes that are nonbinding but are widely seen as reflecting global opinion. However, by the time of the second anniversary of the invasion, the mood had darkened.

The General Assembly did not hold another symbolic vote, but if it had, diplomats say some Middle Eastern countries that once supported Ukraine may have abstained because Kyiv abstained on resolutions calling for a cease-fire in Gaza.

When Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba emerged from the session marking the second anniversary in February, asked what he expected from the U.N. General Assembly, he told reporters , “My main audience today was our fellow colleagues from Asia, from Africa, from Latin America.” His priority was to explain Ukraine’s peace formula and the peace summit the country was planning with Switzerland, he said: “We want them to understand this initiative. We want them to understand that Ukraine wants peace more than anyone else.”

Kuleba’s answer was telling. He has clearly grasped the need to shore up Ukraine’s support in the global south, where Russia has made headway, and Kyiv is venturing further afield of the Security Council. At the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, last year, G-7 leaders declared their intention to work on a series of bilateral security arrangements with Ukraine. Today, more than 30 countries are in bilateral negotiations to help shore up Ukraine’s defenses.

And when it comes to pursuing peace, the center of gravity has also shifted away from the U.N. headquarters in New York—to Switzerland for Ukrainians and to Qatar or Egypt for Palestinians. “I think that everyone quietly understands that the political deals necessary to end the Hamas-Israel war and the Russia-Ukraine war will not come out of the U.N.,” said Richard Gowan, the International Crisis Group’s U.N. director. “Instead, the U.N. is a platform for governments to vent and cast symbolic votes. It’s a venue for public messaging in these cases, not real diplomacy.”

The United Nations Completely Failed in Lebanon

How a U.N. peacekeeping mission may have inadvertently produced Israel’s next war.

On Gaza, the U.N. Struggles for Relevance

As on Ukraine and other critical issues, the multilateral body is trapped in political theater.

Is the United Nations Worth the Price?

The world body isn’t perfect—but you get what you pay for.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (left) greets U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres before a meeting at the U.N. headquarters in New York on Jan. 23. Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov turned up in New York for a series of meetings on Gaza in January, a week after the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland—where Russian officials and oligarchs have not been welcome for two years. An old hand at the U.N., Lavrov swept through the U.N. headquarters as if it were his own Davos. He convened a side meeting of envoys of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and held bilateral meetings with the Palestinian permanent observer to the U.N. and with foreign ministers from a swath of Middle Eastern countries, including NATO member Turkey , current Security Council member Algeria , and Iran , which financially backs Hamas.

At the time, Russia’s hard-fought battle to capture Avdiivka, a city in eastern Ukraine, was reaching its climax—and Moscow was arguing vociferously in the Security Council for a cease-fire in Gaza. This strategy has distracted from some of Russia’s other actions, including making North Korea a key supplier for ammunition, artillery, and missiles in violation of Security Council resolutions. Last week, Russia used its veto power to shield North Korea from a long-running U.N. monitoring program to enforce these sanctions after April. (China abstained, and the 13 other council members voted in favor.)

In February, South Korea and Japan, two current Security Council members, both expressed concern that Russian weapons transfers could end up aiding North Korea’s ballistic missile or nuclear weapons program—another global security threat.

There are benefits to dialogue between adversaries at the U.N. The closed-door meetings of the Security Council, where resolutions are hashed out in advance of a public meeting, provide rare opportunities for U.S. and Russian diplomats to interact. “I heard Americans saying that they appreciate talking to Russians at the closed meetings, even if they fight, but that’s the only place where they can actually interact with the Russians,” a diplomat recently said, speaking anonymously under diplomatic rules.

German soldiers stand in line after leaving a transport plane on return to Wunstorf, Germany, from Mali on Dec. 15, 2023, following the termination of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the African country. Alexander Koerner/Getty Images

But when the Security Council approves resolutions, there can be little to show for it on the ground. Last October, the council authorized a peacekeeping force manned by Kenyan security personnel to grapple with the breakdown in public order in Haiti, but the deployment has been delayed amid spiraling violence. In Mali, where Russia’s Wagner Group forces have sealed a protection deal with the country’s military leaders, the junta forced out U.N. peacekeepers in December. The Security Council recently called for a Ramadan cease-fire in Sudan; three weeks into the Muslim holy month, the guns have not been silenced .

The Black Sea Grain Initiative that followed Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was one of the bright spots of U.N. diplomacy—until it wasn’t. The U.N. and Turkey brokered a deal to permit Russian and Ukrainian food and fertilizer shipments through the Black Sea. When the Kremlin withdrew from the arrangement last summer, the U.N. warned that the end of this deal might result in sharply higher global food prices and even famine in vulnerable countries.

In the end, the worst didn’t come to pass, in large part because Ukraine called Russia’s bluff that it would sink commercial vessels and kept the sea lanes open by sinking Russian military vessels in a series of sea drone and missile strikes. It wasn’t the United Nations’ moral compass that averted catastrophe—it was warfare.

The Security Council votes on whether South Korea should gain entry to the United Nations in 1955. All hands are raised in favor of the vote, except that of Soviet delegate A.A. Sobolev (third from right), who later vetoed the entry of South Korea. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Some analysts have unfavorably compared today’s U.N. to its predecessor, the League of Nations, which failed to prevent World War II. Others have suggested that it should be condemned to the dustbin of history. Things have changed since Hammarskjold’s 1954 speech. The Security Council’s commitment to support South Korea would not happen today; at the time, the Soviet Union was boycotting the council, and China was represented at the U.N. not by the Chinese Communist Party, which had just seized power, but by the Republic of China, the government that had fled to Taiwan.

But the challenges that the U.N. faces now are not new. The most significant change to the body in the last eight decades was the composition of the Security Council, and there have long been calls for reform to better reflect today’s world. The council expanded from 11 to 15 members in 1965, but there is no consensus on how to fairly add more. And more to the point, increasing the number of council members with veto power might enhance equity while further impairing the body’s effectiveness. Focusing on reforming procedures, including the veto power, may be more productive.

None of this accounts for the fact that the U.N. has become more polarized over the last decade because the world has too—both between countries and within them. But in the end, it would be a mistake to write off the U.N., which still ultimately aims toward Hammarskjold’s vision. The international community must hope against hope that these good intentions push the needle back in the right direction.

J. Alex Tarquinio is a resident correspondent at the United Nations in New York, a recipient of a German Marshall Fund journalism fellowship, and a past national president of the Society of Professional Journalists. Twitter:  @alextarquinio

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Top 10 Things To Do And See In Nizhny Novgorod, Russia

Located about 400km east of Moscow , Nizhny Novgorod is one of the most important centers of cultural, economic, and political activity in European Russia . Widely considered, after St Petersburg and Moscow, to be Russia’s ‘third city’, Nizhny is fast becoming a hot-spot for Russian and global tourists alike, attracted by the city’s up-and-coming reputation and stunning landscape.

The Kremlin

Jutting out from the cliffs that overlook the meeting point of the great Volga and Oka rivers, Nizhny Novgorod ‘s ancient Kremlin boasts of some of the best views in the city. Designed by an Italian architect, the 13 magnificent towers and the 12 meter high walls of Nizhny’s Kremlin date back to 1500. On this very spot in 1612, heroes of Russian history Kuzma Minin and Count Dmitry Pozharsky defeated the invading Polish army in extraordinary circumstances. This moment has become legend in Russian history and a statue in honor of these two lies at the foot of St Basil’s in Moscow. The Kremlin is the historic center of the city where you will find an art museum and the lovely Cathedral of the Archangel Michael, as well as a striking monument to those that fought in the Second World War and its flame eternally flickering on in their memory.

Completed in 2012, taking a ride on Nizhny Novgorod’s cablecar has fast become a favorite activity of tourists. The trip offers unparalleled opportunities to view the city’s gorgeous natural landscape from this bird’s eye position. The 3660m long gondola lift connects Nizhny to the town of Bor and stretches across the Volga River for 900 panoramic meters. The gondola acts as both a convenient means of transportation and a fantastic sight-seeing expedition – come at sunset for a golden-bathed view of the river and surrounding landscape.

The house-museum of Maxim Gorky

During the Soviet era, Nizhny Novgorod, birthplace of celebrated Russian writer Maxim Gorky , was renamed ‘Gorky’ in honor of this national hero. This home has been preserved in a state as accurate as possible to how it was left by Gorky and is so successful in this that it would seem as though the writer still lived there. The museum ‘s historic interiors and authentic furnishings will transport you back to the 1900s and the creative world of this icon of Russian literature. Come and make the most of this unique experience to delve into the childhood world of this Russian father of social realism. Museum booklets and guided tours are available in English.

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Nizhegorodskaya Yarmarka

A yarmarka is something akin to a fair, and this historic former market place was restored in 1991, the site now playing home to a superb modern exhibition center. The city’s yarmarka plays host to international events, fairs, and conventions. In 2011, for the 20 year anniversary of the fair’s refounding, a vast array of exhibitions were organized, attended by thousands including members of the British royal family, Vladimir Putin, Mikhail Gorbachev , and Margaret Thatcher . The fair is not only a buzzing center of business and culture, it is also one of the city’s most impressive sights.

The Nizhegorodsky State Art Museum

Located inside Nizhny Novgorod’s ancient Kremlin, the building that houses this art gallery was once the home of the governor of the city. The exhibits are wide-ranging and include everything from 14th century religious icons, to work by 20th century contemporary Russian masters. Particularly dazzling is the collection by Russian painter Nicholas Roerich. There is also a large arts and crafts collection which demonstrates the exquisite handiwork of Russian artisans throughout history.

1. Bolshaya Pokrovskaya Street

Bolshaya pokrovskaya street.

An excellent spot to soak up the best of the city’s atmosphere, this pedestrian street lies in the heart of Nizhny Novgorod. The beautiful Bolshaya Pokrovskaya Street is constantly buzzing and provides new and exciting sights at every turn. Gorgeous buildings and fountains tower on all sides – showcasing the best of Nizhny’s architecture. Quirky shop fronts and lovely local souvenirs will have you pausing at every window while the charming cafés will draw you in with their tempting aromas. Bolshaya Pokrovskaya Street transforms by night into a vibrant hub of evening activity and is the place to come for a night-out in the city. The bars of this street are favorites with Nizhny Novgorod’s student population.

The Chkalov Staircase

An idyllic spot from which to watch the sun’s rays set over the city, this monumental creation was constructed by the Soviet government and is unique to the city of Nizhny Novgorod. The staircase derives its name from pilot Valery Chkalov who, in 1937, became the first man to fly from Moscow to Vancouver through the North Pole. A monument to Chkalov stands at the top of the stairs. The construction of the staircase cost almost 8 million rubles – an immense sum at the time. Over 1,500 stairs connect the city center with the river embankment – making Chkalov’s landmark the longest flight of stairs along the Volga. Nowadays the staircase is a favorite meeting place and relaxation spot for locals.

The Rukavishnikov Estate Museum

The Rukavishnikovs were a family of immensely wealthy merchants originating from the region around Nizhny Novgorod. This superbly restored palace , their former home, has been transformed into a museum of Russian history and gives a realistic snap-shot of life for the wealthy under tsarist rule. The ornate 19th century interiors and exquisite facade are sure to dazzle with their beauty while the lush green of the surrounding natural landscape provides a tranquil getaway from the city center. Lavish furnishings, priceless antiques, and glistening gold will transport you back in time to a world of balls, carriages, banquets, and tsars. Join the world of Russian noble ladies and gentlemen for a day in this stunning palace.

The Sakharov Museum

Nizhny Novgorod’s Sakharov Museum is dedicated to dissident Russian scientist Andrei Sakharov . The nuclear physicist and human rights activist was exiled for six years to the very flat in which the museum is now housed. Sakharov’s support for civil reform and improved human rights in the Soviet Union earned him harsh persecution from the Russian government, but also, in 1975, a Nobel Peace Prize . Sakharov was incarcerated here until 1986 when a KGB officer arrived to install a phone in the flat. Just after the phone was installed it began to ring: the caller was Mikhail Gorbachev, ringing Sakharov to inform him of his release. This phone is now one of the museum’s most treasured artifacts.

The National Centre of Contemporary Art

Inside the walls of Nizhny’s Kremlin can also be found one of the best modern art galleries in Russia. Linked to galleries in both St Petersburg and Moscow, this top-ranking exhibition center houses regularly changing displays of both Russian and international art as well as interactive exhibits and a media library. Progress is also on-going of adding a concert hall, extending the exhibition areas, and creating a restaurant. These additions aim to make art contemporary, not simply a detached, unrelatable concept, but bring it closer to the Russian people.

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Defying Russian Missiles and Soviet Censors, Ukrainian Art Goes on Show

An exhibition in Spain is the first comprehensive survey of Ukrainian modernist art abroad. It was a long road from Kyiv to Madrid.

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By Scott Reyburn

They left with just a couple of hours to spare.

Two trucks loaded with early 20th-century masterworks from Ukraine’s National Art Museum left Kyiv last Tuesday morning, shortly before the city was struck by the heaviest bombardment of missiles Russian forces had yet unleashed. The transport was headed for Spain, where the artworks will be on display as part of the exhibition “ In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine, 1900-1930s,” at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, which opens Nov. 29. But first the works had to get out of Ukraine safely.

“We were very nervous,” said Svitlana Melnyk, the director of Kunsttrans Kyiv, a specialist art transporter hired for the task. Four employees packed the works at the National Art Museum on Monday, then loaded them onto trucks the next morning. “The whole of Ukraine was being attacked. We didn’t know if it was more dangerous staying in Kyiv, or getting out,” she added. Russia fired almost 100 missiles at Ukraine that Tuesday.

“The drivers saw Russian missiles pass overhead,” said Melnyk, who coordinated the transport. The journey was so hazardous that no company was prepared to insure the artworks while in transit in Ukraine, she added. Stress levels ramped up further on Wednesday night when the trucks were delayed for 10 hours at the border with Poland, after a stray missile killed two Polish citizens in the nearby village of Przewodow.

Melnyk said “diplomats were very helpful” in negotiating the trucks’ passage across the border. They eventually reached Spain on Sunday.

The Madrid exhibition of 70 artworks, mainly on loan from museums in Kyiv, will be the first comprehensive survey of Ukrainian modernist art in a foreign country. Many of the works were hidden for more than half a century in a secret vault at the National Art Museum, having been formally categorized as having “zero” value by Soviet administrators. The show’s organizers regard the international presentation of these early 20th century artworks, created at a time when Ukraine was striving to be recognized as a sovereign nation, as a defiant expression of Ukraine’s independence in the face of Russian aggression.

The exhibition also keeps the artworks safe. After the Madrid show closes on April 30, 2023, it is set to transfer to the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany.

“I’ve wanted to organize an exhibition of Ukrainian modernist art for the last six years,” said Konstantin Akinsha, a Ukrainian-American writer and curator based in Italy, who is the prime mover behind the show and its accompanying book , published by Thames & Hudson. Co-edited by Akinsha, the authoritative 248-page text was always envisaged as the catalog for an exhibition, long before a physical location for the show had been found.

“It’s the opposite of how normal exhibitions happen,” said Akinsha. “I put the cart in front of the horse.”

Akinsha found an ally in the international art collector and philanthropist Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza , who is a board member at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, founded by her father.

Appalled by Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February, Thyssen-Bornemisza started a WhatsApp group called “Museums for Ukraine” to share information about cultural damage; the group included Akinsha as well as prominent artists and arts administrators. (“I have quite a rolodex of contacts,” said Thyssen-Bornemisza.) Akinsha sent a message suggesting an international exhibition to promote and safeguard Ukrainian modernist art. “We got talking, and the Thyssen Museum was immensely receptive to this,” Thyssen-Bornemisza said.

The exhibition begins with the Kyiv-trained Alexandra Exter, who lived and worked in Paris from 1906-1914, then returned to Kyiv, where she co-organized a 1914 breakthrough exhibition of Ukrainian Futurist art called “Kiltse” (“The Ring”). Her collaborator was Oleksandr Bohomazov, a Kyiv-based artist whose expressionistic street scenes and landscapes made during World War I are now being recognized as overlooked masterworks of European Futurism.

As the accompanying book points out, the attempt to forge a national visual culture in a region as geopolitically complex as Ukraine, wedged between the crumbling Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires, resulted in a “polyphony of styles and artistic developments across a full range of media,” including theater design, cinema and architecture. The Ukrainian avant-garde’s radical reimagining of folk and Byzantine art, Cubism, Futurism, Suprematism and Constructivism by artists including Davyd Burliuk, Mykhailo Boichuk, Viktor Palmov and Vasyl Yermilov will all be represented in Madrid.

The survey ends with the extraordinary Soviet “Spetsfond,” or “Special Secret Holding,” that in 1937-1939 attempted to erase Ukraine’s modernist visual culture.

During Josef Stalin’s Great Terror of the late 1930s, many Ukrainian artists were branded “public enemies” and were either executed or given long prison sentences. More than 350 pictures, including many by the leading names of the Ukrainian avant-garde, were immured in the vaults of what is now the National Art Museum in Kyiv, owing to their “counterrevolutionary formalist methods.” This cache of long-lost artworks, which forms the core of the Madrid exhibition, has been painstakingly researched over the last eight years by Yuliia Lytvynets, who is now the museum’s director.

““The gap in the history of Ukrainian art was finally filled.” Lytvynets said in an email from Kyiv. She spent the early months of the war living in the National Museum with her colleagues. “We tried not only to take care of the collection 24 hours a day, but also not to forget about our scholarly research,” she said.

The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum show is just one high-profile initiative in the broader national and international campaign to preserve Ukraine’s cultural heritage from annihilation or theft. There have been some devastating losses during the conflict. Earlier this month, a statement from the Ukrainian army said that the art museum in occupied Kherson had been subjected to mass looting shortly before the strategically important city was retaken by Ukrainian forces.

“People woke up to the fact that this was a culture war,” said Thyssen-Bornemisza, the collector. “Putin’s war on Ukraine is not just about stealing territories, but also about controlling its narrative.”

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia declared martial law in annexed areas of Ukraine in October and approved the removal of artworks to “preserve” them.

“Why is there a war in my country now? The war is against Ukrainian identity,” said Olena Kashuba-Volvach, a Kyiv-based co-curator of the Madrid exhibition.

She added that, in both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, Ukraine and other nations were deprived of their identity. “Everything was defined as Russian,” she said.

Kashuba-Volvach said she believed that culture was the self-knowledge of a nation. “If we do not preserve Ukrainian culture during the war,” she added, “we will not preserve Ukraine.”

Scott Reyburn is a London-based journalist who writes about the art world, artists and their markets. More about Scott Reyburn

Our Coverage of the War in Ukraine

News and Analysis

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has signed into law three measures aimed at replenishing the ranks of his country’s depleted army, including lowering the draft age to 25 .

With continued American aid to Ukraine stalled and against the looming prospect of a second Trump presidency, NATO officials are looking to take more control of directing military support from Ukraine’s allies  — a role that the United States has played for the past two years.

Exploding drones hit an oil refinery and munitions factory far to the east of Moscow, in what Ukrainian media and military experts said was among the longest-range strikes with Ukrainian drones so far in the war .

Conditional Support: Ukraine wants a formal invitation to join NATO, but NATO has no appetite for taking on a new member  that, because of the alliance’s covenant of collective security, would draw it into the biggest land war in Europe since 1945.

“Shell Hunger”: A desperate shortage of munitions in Ukraine  is warping tactics and the types of weapons employed. What few munitions remain are often mismatched with battlefield needs as the country’s forces prepare for an expected Russian offensive this summer.

Turning to Marketing: Ukraine’s troop-starved brigades have started their own recruitment campaigns  to fill ranks depleted in the war with Russia.

How We Verify Our Reporting

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We monitor and authenticate reports on social media, corroborating these with eyewitness accounts and interviews. Read more about our reporting efforts .

Opinion Trump’s anti-Ukraine view dates to the 1930s. America rejected it then. Will we now?

Robert Kagan, a Post Opinions contributing editor, is the author of “ The Ghost at the Feast: America and the Collapse of World Order, 1900-1941 ” as well as “ Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart — Again ,” which will be published by Knopf in April.

Many Americans seem shocked that Republicans would oppose helping Ukraine at this critical juncture in history. Don’t Republican members of Congress see the consequences of a Russian victory, for America’s European allies, for its Asian allies and ultimately for the United States itself? What happened to the party of Ronald Reagan? Clearly, people have not been taking Donald Trump ’s resurrection of America First seriously. It’s time they did.

The original America First Committee was founded in September 1940. Consider the global circumstances at the time. Two years earlier, Hitler had annexed Austria and invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia. One year earlier, he had invaded and conquered Poland. In the first months of 1940, he invaded and occupied Norway, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands. In early June 1940, British troops evacuated from Dunkirk, and France was overrun by the Nazi blitzkrieg. In September, the very month of the committee’s formation, German troops were in Paris and Edward R. Murrow was reporting from London under bombardment by the Luftwaffe. That was the moment the America First movement launched itself into the battle to block aid to Britain.

Cutting off Ukraine seems like small beer by comparison, but behind it lies the same “America First” thinking. For Donald Trump and his followers, pulling the plug on Ukraine is part of a larger aim to end America’s broader commitment to European peace and security. America’s commitment to NATO, Trump believes, should be conditional, at best: Russia can do “ whatever the hell they want” to allies who do not pay their fair share and meet certain defense-spending objectives.

Other Republicans don’t even mention conditions. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has called for the immediate reduction of U.S. force levels in Europe and the abrogation of America’s common-defense Article 5 commitments . He wants the United States to declare publicly that in the event of a “direct conflict” between Russia and a NATO ally, America will “withhold forces.” The Europeans need to know they can no longer “count on us like they used to.” Elbridge Colby, a former Trump Pentagon official praised by Hawley , has written widely (and wrongly) that United States cannot defend both East Asia and Europe and that Europeans must fend for themselves because, as he put it in a recent social media post, “Asia is more important than Europe.” He said, “ If we have to leave Europe more exposed, so be it.”

Can Republicans really be returning to a 1930s worldview in our 21st-century world? The answer is yes. Trump’s Republican Party wants to take the United States back to the triad of interwar conservatism: high tariffs, anti-immigrant xenophobia, isolationism. According to Russ Vought , who is often touted as Trump’s likely chief of staff in a second term, it is precisely this “older definition of conservatism,” the conservatism of the interwar years, that they hope to impose on the nation when Trump regains power.

So it’s time to take a closer look at the 1930s conservative mentality and the America First movement it spawned.

Republican anti-interventionism of those interwar years — “isolationism” as critics called it — was less a carefully considered strategic doctrine than an extension of their battles against domestic opponents. Yes, there were self-proclaimed “realists” in the late 1930s assuring everyone that the United States was invulnerable and that events in Asia, where Japan was also on the rampage, and Europe need not endanger American security. Those “realists” chided their fellow Americans for a “giddy” moralism and emotionalism in response to Nazi and Japanese aggression that prevented them from dealing “with the world as it is,” as historian Charles Beard put it. George F. Kennan, an anti-liberal conservative who served in the American Embassy in Prague, at the time applauded the Munich settlement and praised the Czechs for eschewing the “romantic” course of resistance in favor of the “humiliating but truly heroic one of realism.”

This “realism” meshed well with anti-interventionism. Americans had to respect “the right of an able and virile nation [i.e. Nazi Germany] to expand,” aviator Charles Lindbergh argued. The leading Republican of his day, Ohio Sen. Robert Taft, ridiculed those who expressed fears of advancing fascism. The United States could not be ranging “over the world like a knight errant,” protecting “democracy and ideals of good faith” and tilting, “like Don Quixote, against the windmills of fascism.” The world was “ big enough to contain all kinds of different ways of life.”

It was not fascism that conservative Republicans worried about. It was communism. For them, the foreign policy battle in the interwar years was but a subset of their larger war against Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, which Republicans insisted disguised an attempt to bring communism to the United States. Conservatives in both the United States and Great Britain had long seen Hitler and Mussolini as bulwarks against the spread of communism in Germany and elsewhere.

Nor were they especially troubled by the dramatic rise of official antisemitism in Germany. In the 1920s and ’30s, influential Republicans and conservatives put Jews at the center of various conspiracies against America. Some conservatives referred to the New Deal as the “ Jew Deal ” (there were Jews among FDR’s “brain trust”), and they opposed intervening in a war in which Jews were among the prominent victims. Lindbergh, among the most admired men in the United States, claimed Jews were pushing the United States into war “for reasons which are not American.”

Conservative Republicans also warned against the creation of an American “liberal empire” no less oppressive than the one Hitler was trying to create. The result, Taft claimed, would be the “establishment of a dictatorship in this country.” In May 1940, as the British army faced annihilation at Dunkirk, Taft insisted it was “no time for the people to be wholly absorbed in foreign battles.” It was “the New Deal which may leave us weak and unprepared for attack.”

America’s entry into World War II was, among other things, the triumph of a contrary view of the world. Even before Pearl Harbor, a majority of Americans, prodded by Roosevelt, came to view the advancing power of European fascism and Japanese authoritarian militarism as a threat not just to U.S. security but also to liberal democracy in general. While Roosevelt did warn (implausibly) of the Luftwaffe bombing the United States from bases in Latin America, his broader argument was less about immediate physical security than about the kind of world Americans wanted to live in.

Even if the United States faced no immediate threat of military attack, Roosevelt insisted, in his January 1940 State of the Union address , the world would be a “shabby and dangerous place to live in — yes, even for Americans to live in” if it were ruled “by force in the hands of a few.” To live as a lone island in such a world would be a nightmare. There were times Americans needed to defend not just their homeland, he told Congress in 1939 , “but the tenets of faith and humanity on which their churches, their governments and their very civilization are founded. ... To save one we must now make up our minds to save all.”

The Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies , formed in May 1940 by progressive Kansas newspaper editor William Allen White and including such prominent Democrats as Dean Acheson, declared the war in Europe was a “life and death struggle for every principle we cherish in America” and urged the United States to “throw its economic and moral weight on the side of the nations of Western Europe, great and small, that are struggling in battle for a civilized way of life.”

This was exactly what the men who formed the America First Committee opposed — and not because they spoke for some mass groundswell of working-class Americans. The poor and working class in these years were with FDR. The America First Committee was founded by a group of Yale students. (Kingman Brewster Jr., a future president of Yale, was a member, as was Potter Stewart, a future Supreme Court justice.) But it soon boasted an impressive list of wealthy and influential supporters that included textile magnate Henry Regnery; chairman of the board of Sears, retired Gen. Robert E. Wood; president of Vick Chemical Co., H. Smith Richardson; and diplomat and future governor of Connecticut Chester B. Bowles. Although they railed at “elites” and claimed to speak for real Americans, they were chiefly business executives who represented the nation’s commercial and industrial elites.

Unfortunately for the original America Firsters, most Americans rejected their arguments and embraced FDR’s liberal worldview. Especially after the fall of France, polling showed a majority of Americans wanted to send aid to Britain even at the risk of the United States being dragged into war. The America First Committee, despite its well-funded nationwide lobbying effort — it boasted 800,000 members in 400 chapters across the nation — lost the battle against Lend-Lease and all subsequent attempts to prevent the United States from becoming the world’s “ arsenal of democracy .”

When the United States was finally drawn into the war, partly because of Pearl Harbor but also because of FDR’s increasingly belligerent approach to what he called the “bandit nations,” anti-interventionist Republican critics called it “ the New Dealers’ War. ” We like to think that great accomplishments in American history are the result of broad national consensus. More often they are the triumph of one worldview over another. American entry into World War II was the victory of a liberal worldview over an anti-interventionism rooted in a conservative anti-liberalism.

That victory remained largely intact throughout the Cold War and after. Although many conservatives eventually hopped on the internationalist bandwagon for the sake of fighting communism (and many on the left dissented from the liberal consensus), it was FDR’s worldview that guided Republican presidents from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Richard M. Nixon to Reagan to the two Bushes. It was the belief that the United States had both an interest and an obligation to support a liberal democratic, capitalist order and to do so by committing to alliances and deploying hundreds of thousands of GIs thousands of miles from American shores. Reagan’s foreign policy was in many ways simply a resumption of the muscular internationalism of FDR, his onetime hero, and the liberal anti-communism of Harry S. Truman and Acheson.

Not all Republicans have forgotten this legacy. Today, when people like Mitch McConnell, the GOP Senate leader, insist that what happens to Ukraine has “a direct and vital bearing on America’s national security and vital interests,” they are articulating this liberal worldview, the assumption that the United States has an interest in the peace and security of a predominantly liberal democratic Europe. If Americans care about what happens in Europe, then they must care about what happens in Ukraine. For should Ukraine fall to Russian control, it would move the line of confrontation between Russia and NATO hundreds of miles westward and allow Vladimir Putin to pursue his unconcealed ambition to restore Moscow’s hegemony in Eastern and Central Europe. Should Ukraine fall, the cost and risk of stopping Russia later will be much higher, including the risk of the United States having to confront Russia as it did during the Cold War. My Post colleague Marc Thiessen has thus advised Republicans to give Ukraine the weapons it needs now, lest they come to “own Ukraine’s military collapse” and leave a reelected Trump “with a weak hand.” Yet that sensible advice also rests on the assumption that at some point the United States may have to come to Europe’s defense against an aggressive Putin.

But what of those Republicans who don’t share that basic assumption? When Sen. J.D. Vance (Ohio) tells Stephen K. Bannon that “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” that statement rests on a different assumption, namely, that a liberal democratic Europe is of no value to the United States and that Americans should not be willing to fight for Germany and France any more than they should fight for Ukraine. It is the original America First position.

Like those of their 1930s forebears, today’s Republicans’ views of foreign policy are heavily shaped by what they consider the more important domestic battle against liberalism. Foreign policy issues are primarily weapons to be wielded against domestic enemies. Today’s Republicans depict their domestic opponents as, among other things, “communists” who are taking their orders from communist China. Republicans insist that President Biden is a communist, that his election was a “ communist takeover ,” that his administration is a “communist regime.” It follows, then, that Biden must have a “pro-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) agenda,” as the powerful Republican chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, has put it . “Communist China has their President ... China Joe,” Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted on Biden’s Inauguration Day in 2021. Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) has called the president “ Beijing Biden .”

And just as World War II was the “New Dealers’ War,” so Ukraine is the war of “globalists.” Hawley, killing many birds with one stone, warns, like his America First forebears, that a cabal of “liberal globalists on the left” and “neoconservatives on the right”is trying to impose a “liberal empire” on the world to make “the world over in the image of New York and Silicon Valley.” What makes these “liberal globalists” and “neoconservatives” dangerous, Hawley insists, is that they are not pursuing a “truly nationalist foreign policy” because they themselves are not true Americans.

The GOP devotion to America First is merely the flip side of Trump’s “ poison the blood ” campaign. It is about the ascendancy of White Christian America and the various un-American ethnic and racial groups allegedly conspiring against it.

This has long been evident in Republican veneration of anti-liberal dictators such as Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orban. Conservatives applauded when Putin warned in 2013 that the “Euro-Atlantic countries” were “rejecting” the “Christian values” that were the “basis of Western civilization,” “denying moral principles and all traditional identities: national, cultural, religious, and even sexual.” Patrick J. Buchanan put it best when he called Putin “ one of us ,” the voice of “conservatives, traditionalists and nationalists of all continents and countries,” and praised him for standing up against “the cultural and ideological imperialism of ... a decadent west.” The New York Times’ Christopher Caldwell has called Putin a “hero to populist conservatives around the world” because he refuses to submit to the U.S.-dominated liberal world order: “Vladimir Vladimirovich is not the president of a feminist NGO. He is not a transgender-rights activist.” He is “the pre-eminent statesman of our time.”

And what about Trump himself? Does Trump have such a fully formed ideological and strategic agenda? The answer may well be no. As his own former attorney general pointed out , Trump “is a consummate narcissist … who will always put his interests ahead of the country’s.” But Trump’s narcissism meshes well with the aims of those yearning to extricate the United States from its commitments in Europe. In his personal life, as people who know him tend to agree, Trump has no allies. As one Republican told the Wall Street Journal, “All relationships with Trump are one-way transactional and the day he decides that it’s no longer beneficial to him, folks are out the door.” It is hardly surprising that he takes the same approach in foreign policy. Trump does not value America’s allies any more than he values any other relationship, including his relationships with Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un. Trump does not see the world as divided between America’s friends and enemies but only between those who can help him, or hurt him, and those who can’t.

Trump has none of the reverence for America’s commitments overseas that Republican political leaders have shared since the 1940s, when even Michigan Republican Sen. Arthur Vandenberg, a true isolationist before Pearl Harbor, threw his support behind NATO. Ronald Reagan was famous for his close relationships with Britain’s Margaret Thatcher, Germany’s Helmut Kohl, Japan’s Yasuhiro Nakasone and even France’s François Mitterrand, a socialist.

If anything, it has been Democratic presidents who have raised the most concern about American commitments. In the late 1970s, Jimmy Carter openly toyed with pulling U.S. troops out of South Korea, and, more recently, Barack Obama’s feelings for the European allies were noticeably cooler than his predecessors’ — and he was very clear in his view that Ukraine was not a “vital” interest of the United States. But none has gone as far as Trump, Vance, Hawley and Colby in insisting that America should no longer be bound by its European alliance.

It doesn’t really matter what Trump believes, therefore. More important is what he doesn’t believe. Nor does he need to withdraw formally from NATO to introduce massive instability. It will be enough that he and his advisers cast significant doubt on the reliability of America’s Article 5 obligations. There is no such thing as a conditional guarantee. Once other nations realize that America’s commitment to defend treaty allies can no longer be relied upon, the whole configuration of power in the international system will change. All powers, whether friendly or hostile to the United States, will adjust accordingly.

In this respect, those Trump Republicans who wish to sever American commitments to allies are not only bringing back a 1930s worldview. If they take power, they will bring us back to a 1930s world.

Imagine that Kyiv falls a year or two into a second Trump presidency and that instead of responding by rushing to bolster the alliance’s defenses with a more substantial American commitment, Trump expresses relative indifference. How will the nations of Europe respond? Russian troops will be hundreds of miles closer to NATO countries and will share a nearly 700-mile border with Poland, but if Republicans have their way, the United States will do nothing. It will be a historic geopolitical revolution.

Under those circumstances, Europeans will have to make a choice. They must either adjust to the expanding hegemony of a militarized Russia led by a proven aggressor — accepting the world “as it is” in prescribed “realist” fashion. Or they must prepare themselves to stand up to it — without the United States.

The stakes will be highest and most immediate for the Baltic nations, which in the eyes of traditional Russian nationalists such as Putin are mere appendages of Russia, with significant Russian-speaking populations that may at any time demand “protection” from Moscow, as the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia demanded protection from Berlin in the 1930s. The Baltic states have never enjoyed sovereign independence in periods of Russian hegemony and owe their independence today entirely to American and NATO guarantees.

Then there is Poland, which during the Cold War and repeatedly in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries was either subjugated or partitioned by Moscow. Will the Poles again go quietly into that good Russian night once they have been left deliberately “exposed,” as Colby put it, to the full weight of Russian power without the United States or NATO to back them up?

The most important nation in this transformed Europe will be Germany. Germans will quickly find themselves faced with a terrible choice. Either they try to remain in a fundamentally pacifist mode, as they have been since 1945, or they once again become a great military power. To defend themselves in the absence of an American guarantee, Germans will face a staggering uphill climb to match Russia’s conventional-weapons capabilities. But they will also have to address Russia’s overwhelming nuclear superiority, which Putin has not been shy about threatening to use even against the nuclear-armed United States. Will the Germans rely on British and French nuclear capacities to deter Russia, since they can no longer count on the American nuclear umbrella? Or will they choose to become a nuclear power themselves?

Indeed, should the United States make clear that it is no longer bound by its security guarantees, the likelihood is that other industrialized nations will quickly turn to nuclear weapons to try to make up for the sudden gap in their defenses. Japan could build hundreds of nuclear weapons in a very short time if it chose — or do the new America Firsters believe that the Japanese will find reassuring America’s abandonment of the similar treaty commitments in Europe? We will be living in a world of many heavily armed powers engaged in a multipolar arms race, ever poised for conflict — in short, the world that existed in the 1930s, only this time with nuclear weapons. But yes, they will be spending more than 2 percent of their GDP on defense.

Who can say when all this will come a cropper for the United States? Putin’s first act of aggression was in Georgia in 2008; his second was in 2014, when he invaded Crimea and eastern Ukraine; his third was in 2022 when, contrary to almost everyone’s expectations, he invaded all of Ukraine. But his cautious probing, if you can call it that, was in the context of a continuing American commitment to European security.

And how long before China, watching America abandon its allies in Europe, asks whether Americans still plan to live up to any of their commitments anywhere? Even if one believes that “Asia is more important than Europe,” does it strengthen the Asian allies to abandon the European allies? Hitler also hoped the United States would focus exclusively on Asia and leave Europe to him. It is no surprise that among those most frightened by Trump’s talk of abandoning NATO is Taiwan.

An older generation of Americans, many of whom may vote for Trump this year, may not live to see the consequences — those crises will fall on their children and grandchildren. But they can be sure of this: If they vote for a return to the 1930s, posterity is not going to mistake them for America’s “greatest generation.”

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