Turning the pages back... November 11, 1891 (11/08/98)

Turning the pages back...

November 11, 1891

Fedir Ernst was born on November 11, 1891, in Hlukhiv, a historic town in northeastern Ukraine, now in the Sumy Oblast, a scant 15 miles or so from the Russian border. He studied art history at Kyiv University under the scholar Hryhoriy Pavlutsky, from whom he gained an appreciation for the Hellenic artifacts in Ukraine as well as of his country's church architecture.

By age 28 he established himself as a leading expert on Ukraine's painting and architecture, having published "Kyivski Arkhitekty XVII Viku" (Kyivan Architects of the 17th Century, 1918) and "Ukrainske Mystetstvo XVII-XVIII Vikiv" (Ukrainian Art of the 17th-18th Centuries, 1919).

In the cultural efflorescence of the early years of Soviet Ukraine, Ernst thrived. He was a member of the All-Ukrainian Archeological Committee of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and chairman of Kyiv's All-Ukrainian Historical Museum from 1922.

He studied the architecture of Kyiv's Old Bursa (student residence), publishing a monograph on the subject in 1921, came out with yet another study of Kyiv's 17th century architecture (1926) and organized a posthumous exhibit of graphic artist Heorhii Narbut's works in 1926 (a catalogue of which was published in book form that year).

In fact, together with another art historian and scholar, Danylo Shcherbakivsky, Ernst is credited with organizing the first large-scale exhibits of Ukrainian art in the 1920s. Two of these shows also resulted in publications - "Ukrainskyi Portret XVII-XX Stolit: Vystavka Ukrainskoho Portreta" (Ukrainian Portraiture of the 17th-20th Centuries: An Exhibition of Ukrainian Portraits, 1925); and "Ukrainske Maliarstvo XVII-XX Stolit" (Ukrainian Painting of the 17th-20th Centuries, 1929).

At a time when Lenin was still abetting efforts to stymie "Russian chauvinism," Ernst joined Shcherbakivsky in demands for the return of artifacts that had been taken to Russia from museums in Kyiv. As the Stalinist freeze descended, this boldness attracted a more malignant attention.

Although Ernst survived the initial devastation of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, he was expelled from his position at the Historical Museum in 1933, then exiled to Soviet Central Asia in the following year. Never allowed to return to Ukraine, he nevertheless managed to secure positions in the museums of Alma Ata in Kazakstan, then closer west, in Ufa, Russia, upon his release some time in the 1940s.

Ernst died in Ufa on August 17, 1949.

Source: "Ernst, Fedir," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol. 1 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984).

| Home Page |