Myroslava M. Mudrak: art history professor

A recipient of the Ohio State University Alumnae Distinguished Teaching Award (1998), Prof. Myroslava M. Mudrak has devoted her scholarly interests to the study of art in East Central Europe, Ukraine and Russia. She concentrates mostly on the modernist period of the early 20th century, with expertise in Russian and Soviet avant-garde, modern art between the two world wars, early 20th century abstraction and Soviet Realism and art under totalitarianism.

Prof. Mudrak's seminal work, 'New Generation' and Artistic Modernism in Ukraine (1986), was awarded the Kovaliw Prize for Ukrainian Studies. As a Fulbright scholar she spent extended research periods in Czecho-Slovakia and Poland, and, when in the Soviet Union during 1977-1978, she was instrumental in uncovering the dissident currents of artistic expression in Ukraine during the seemingly stagnant years of Brezhnev's repressive rule (see "Contemporary Art From the Ukraine," 1979).

An active participant at professional meetings, she has given papers on topics as diverse as "Photomontage in East European Art," "The Semiotics of Suprematism in Slovenian Contem-porary Art," and "Boichukism and the Neo-Byzantine School of Modern Painting."

Prof. Mudrak, who earned her Ph.D. degree at the University of Texas at Austin, is interim chairperson and associate professor at the department of history of art at the Ohio State University in Columbus.

Prof. Mudrak took part in a two-day international conference devoted to the theme of "Rethinking Malevich" organized by the New York-based Malevich Society in celebration of the 125th anniversary of Kazimir Malevich's birth (1878-1935). The conference was held February 6-7, at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (see The Weekly, February 1). Prof. Mudrak's presentation, titled "Malevich and His Ukrainian Contemporaries," offered an analysis of the Ukrainian context that may have informed three separate formative periods of Malevich's art, with consideration given to Malevich's first teacher, Mykola Pymonenko, the Kyiv Cubo-Futurist Oleksander Bohomazov and Malevich's fellow teacher at the Kyiv Institute of Art, Mykhailo Boichuk.

Prof. Mudrak delivered an illustrated presentation on Malevich's formative periods in Ukraine at the Shevchenko Scientific Society on February 8, at the invitation of the society and The Ukrainian Museum of New York.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, April 11, 2004, No. 15, Vol. LXXII

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