The exhibition series HERE AND NOW at Museum Ludwig challenges the conventions of museum work from today’s perspective. Russia’s war against Ukraine changes our approach toward the concept of “Russian avant-garde”. Many artists historically viewed under this umbrella term, including such names from the collection of Museum Ludwig as Alexandra Exter, Oleksandr Bohomazov, Volodymyr Burliuk, and Vasyl Yermilov, lived and worked in Ukraine and played an instrumental role in shaping Ukrainian culture one hundred years ago. They either came from or had studios in such cities as Kyiv, Odesa and Kharkiv, where they created Cubo-Futurist, Suprematist and Constructivist works.
The exhibition dedicated to modernism in Ukraine brings together some ninety paintings and works on paper created between the 1900s and 1930s. Curated by Konstantin Akinsha, Katia Denysova and Olena Kashuba-Volvach, it was first presented under the title In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine, 1900-1930s at Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid. The show features many loans from the National Art Museum of Ukraine and the Museum of Theatre, Music and Cinema Arts of Ukraine that were transported to Europe from Kyiv. This selection is complemented by works from private collections and the holding of Museum Ludwig. Many of the displayed artists, including Oleksandr Bohomazov, Anatol Petrytskyi and Sarah Shor, as well as such artistic groups as the Boischukists and the Jewish Kultur Lige, are hardly known in the West and will be a real discovery for the international audience.
The exhibition recreates the polyphony of artistic styles and cultural identities that existed in Ukraine in the early 20th century. By focusing on the cities of Kyiv and Kharkiv, it tells the story of Ukrainian modernist artists and their attempts to produce a national school of art in a bid for Ukrainian statehood and cultural autonomy.
The modernist movement in Ukraine unfolded against a complicated socio-political backdrop of collapsing empires, World War I, the revolutions of 1917 with the ensuing short-lived independence of the Ukrainian People’s Republic (1917–20), and the eventual establishment of Soviet Ukraine. Despite such political turmoil, this became a period of true flourishing in Ukrainian art, literature, theatre and cinema. Ukraine’s complex historical background resulted in a vibrant
amalgamation of encounters, combining Ukrainian, Polish, Russian and Jewish elements to create a distinctly local cultural profile.
This new art-historical perspective on the period is expanded with a contribution by the contemporary artist Daria Koltsova (b. 1987 in Kharkiv). Invited by Yuliia Berdiiarova, a curator at Museum Ludwig, she will present a new monumental glass-based installation that reflects on the question of Ukraine’s cultural heritage and the possibilities for its preservation in the face of war.
Artists: Alexander Archipenko, Oleksandr Bohomazov, Mykhailo Boichuk, Volodymyr Burliuk, Alexandra Exter, Oleksandr Khvostenko-Khvostov, Borys Kosarev, Kazymyr Malevych, Vadym Meller, Viktor Palmov, Anatol Petrytskyi, Manuil Shekhtman, Maria Sinyakova, Sarah Shor, Vasyl Yermilov, Oleksandr Chwostenko-Chwostow, and others. & Daria Koltsova
Curators:
♦ Konstantin Akinsha (art historian, Fellow at the Max-Weber-Kolleg, University of Erfurt, founder of The Avant-Garde Art Research Project),
♦ Dr. Olena Kashuba-Volvach (Head of the Department of Art of 19th-20th cent. at the National Art Museum of Ukraine, Kyiv),
♦ Katia Denysova (art historian, curator, PhD Candidate at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London).
The exhibition is on the display till September 24, 2023.