Banned art: The phenomenon of Ukrainian avant-garde, 1910-1935 (11/11/01)

Banned art: The phenomenon of Ukrainian avant-garde, 1910-1935

by Alexandra Hawryluk

WINNIPEG - "To me, it was like Christmas Day: somebody bringing out all these presents that were totally unexpected." That's how Mary Jo Hughes, the historical curator at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, described her reaction on being shown the paintings of Bohomazov, Boichuk, Burliuk, Epstein, Exter, Malevich, Meller, Palmov, Petrytsky and Sedliar, hidden in the underground vaults of the National Art Museum of Ukraine in Kyiv.

And indeed, the brilliant colors, the inventiveness of composition and design, the newness and the freshness of the interpretation of even traditional themes seen in the paintings of "The Phenomenon of the Ukrainian Avant-garde 1910-1935" exhibit at the Winnipeg Art Gallery (October 10 through January 13, 2002), do create a festive, exuberant atmosphere.

The exhibit, housed in the gallery's three largest rooms, opens with Fedir Krychevsky's large 1927 triptych "Life." Although it is a well-known work - the brilliant reds and the subtle eroticism of its "Love," the monolithic solidarity of "The Family" group, the somber blacks and the stoic suffering of "Return," have a surprising impact, and provide a good introduction to the paintings in the next two rooms. As in the triptych, light and dark, color and form, suffering and joy, are the leitmotifs that run through the show.

Understanding the limited usefulness of art that aims merely to represent, artists living in the early decades of the 20th century created vibrant new ways of dealing with subject, design and color. Alexander Archipenko, set out to demonstrate that reality could be translated either into the angular facets of a Cubist sculpture, like his "Boxers," or the simplified, elegant curves of his "Flat Torso." Painters, like Sonia Delaney in Paris, explored the expressive qualities of pure color, while Alexandra Exter infused the largely monochromatic French Cubism with rich color. Amazingly inventive Futurist theater costumes were created by Vadym Meller.

At the same time, Olexander Bohomazov, with his new style called Spectralism, pushed art theory even further, as he turned artists' attention to painting, not the subject itself, but the sensorial perceptions artists received from it. This is not as far-fetched as it sounds. In his "Sketch for the Sawyers" the various bands of color create the illusion, not so much of the movement of the saws, as the resonating rhythms and sounds of an orchestra, with one of the sawyers in the role of the conductor.

Then there is Boichuk and his invention, Monumentalism, which combined the strong colors of popular decorative arts of his native land with the simplified, monumental forms of Byzantine painting.

Yet, "It is often overlooked that many of the most influential and innovative avant-garde artists [in Europe] came from Ukraine, among them the Futurist David Burliuk, the costume and set designer Alexandra Exter, the Constructivist Vladimir Tatlin, the Suprematist Kazimir Malevich and the Cubist sculptor Alexander Archipenko. These individualists were often the first to explore new concepts and techniques," write the curators of the WAG exhibit, Dr. Myroslav Shkandkij and Ms. Hughes. These were the people who were on the leading edge of modern European art.

On looking at this amazing collection one cannot help but wonder: Why haven't we seen these pictures before?

Two reasons come to mind: Soviet repression and Western ignorance. If we thought that the Iron Curtain had merely kept Western source materials out of the USSR, that is only half of the story, because it also kept information about East European culture in the USSR. So, theories about the development of modern art were based on the visible product of artists living in France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and the United States.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall, however, perceptions changed. "The recent opening-up of Russia and Central Europe has coincided with a massive attempt to redescribe modernism in Western Europe, the Americas and Australia ... Few historians of modern art, trained in the West ... even know the names of major figures in East European or Latin American modernism," writes the American art historian Richard R. Bretell in his book "Modern Art 1851-1929" (Oxford University Press, 1999).

Then, too, treating the terms "Soviet" and "Russian" as synonyms, compounded the problem because such a perception failed to recognize the individual countries making up the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union.

The Winnipeg Art Gallery is one of the first art establishments in North America to address these problems. In recognition of his avant-garde status, the gallery hosted a landmark retrospective of Alexander Archipenko's work in 1962. In 1991 the WAG organized "The Spirit of Ukraine: 500 Years of Painting," while in year 2000 it sponsored a showing of Taras Snihurowycz's icons. This year, the Ukrainian avant-garde show is complimented by two separate, concurrent, exhibitions of Ukrainian Canadian avant-garde artists - Taras Polataiko and Natalka Husar.

As the WAG historical curator, Ms. Hughes, put it: "We're hoping that the [avant-garde] show will open some eyes. There are many reasons why we did the show. One of them is to show the contributions of these artists, not just to an insular scene in Kyiv or Kharkiv, but rather how they impacted the whole world."

The other reasons for these avant-garde works remaining in obscurity for so long, was displayed right there on the gallery wall - an enlarged photocopy of a Soviet government document issued September 8, 1937, by a four-member special Commission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine. It states that the designated paintings "give a false image of the Soviet people, have no artistic or museum value, and as works created by the enemies of the people should be destroyed." A list of artists and their paintings followed.

This is the founding document of the infamous "Spetsfond," Stalin's Special Collection of banned art. By the authority of this act, in the years 1937 to 1939, over 2,000 works of Ukrainian modern art were confiscated (taken out of private and public collections) and secreted in the vaults of the National Art Museum in Kyiv. What's more, the authority of this act was used to execute Mykhailo Boichuk, his wife, Sofia Nalepinska-Boichuk, and other members of the Boichuk school.

The story of the "Spetsfond" does not end there, however. During World War II a part of this Special Collection was removed to Germany. When in 1947 it was returned from Königsburg to Kyiv, via Leningrad, a good part of it went missing. In the end, the museum vaults in Kyiv contained approximately 300 pictures. But, even these would have been lost to the vigilance of the Central Committee during the 1950 purges, were it not for the dedication of the museum staff, especially Dmytro Horbachov, who could not bring themselves to destroy culture.

Included in the Special Collection, and therefore in the show's creative spectrum, are pictures of the short-lived renaissance of organized Jewish life during the early years of Soviet rule in Ukraine. Mark Epstein's beautiful, but little known, drawings of daily life in rural Jewish communities are particularly eloquent.

What do all these artists have in common? For one thing, incredible inventiveness. For another, their love for color - rich, deep and glowing - which is imbedded in their common heritage, the Ukrainian decorative arts. Their common Ukrainian iconographic traditions, too, may have a much deeper and much more subtle influence on modern art than is generally supposed. And certainly, all of them have played leading roles in the development of various aspects of modern art.

"What we recognize though, with this exhibition, is that it's just the beginning. There is much more scholarship to be done and our five guest writers in our catalogue have certainly put forth some ideas that, I know, will be welcome here in North America," said Ms. Hughes. At the same time, Dr. Shkandrij, the initiator of the project, expressed the hope that the Winnipeg exhibit will motivate North American curators to re-evaluate their collections, especially those works that have erroneously been attributed to Russian avant-garde.

The show was funded by Aim Funds Management Inc. and Trimark Investments, with the financial support of the Museums Assistance Program, Department of Canadian Heritage; the Winnipeg Art Gallery Foundation; the Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko; and Taras and Emilia Snihurowycz.

The exhibit was officially opened by the lieutenant governor of Manitoba, Peter Liba.

The Art Gallery of Hamilton, will host the show on February 9-April 7, 2002, and the Edmonton Art Gallery, will present it on June 21-September 15, 2002.

Alexandra Hawryluk writes a regular feature called "The World of Ideas" for Radio Canada International in Montreal.

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