“100 Nahirny Churches: The Churches of Evhen Nahirny,” by Khristina Lew, Vasyl Slobodyan and Natalka Filevych. Lviv: 2015. 131 pp. $40.
Evhen Nahirny (1885-1951) was one of the most important and prolific architects working in Ukrainian sacral architecture in the early 20th century. In “100 Nahirny Churches: The Churches of Evhen Nahirny,” a collaboration by Natalka Filevych, archivist at the Lviv Gallery of Art; Khristina Lew, photojournalist and Nahirny’s great-granddaughter; and Vasyl Slobodyan, senior scholar at the Western Ukrainian Restoration Institute; his life and work have been returned to prominence.
This multifaceted compendium offers architectural drawings, photographs and extensive descriptions of churches, as well as detailed analysis of the social, political and cultural forces in Ukraine that shaped Nahirny’s sacral forms throughout his career. In his preface, Mr. Slobodyan frames the architect’s work as rooted in a wide range of traditions – Baroque, Art Moderne, Romantic, Constructivist, and folk – while also experimental in its unlikely and intriguing combinations of different design features. His works consist of over 190 projects, including churches, belltowers and chapels, but also cultural centers, reading rooms, schools, apartment buildings and villas. As such, Nahirny’s creative impact on Ukrainian public spaces in Halychyna – sacred and secular alike – is extensive and wide-ranging.
The first volume of the two-part series was published in 2013 and featured Evhen’s father, Ukrainian architect and civic organizer Vasyl Nahirny (1848-1921), who built more than 200 churches in western Ukraine, Poland and Romania in the first half of the 20th century. As important as the history of Vasyl and Evhen Nahirny and their work is the story of the discovery and recovery of the Nahirny archive by Borys Voznytsky, the director of the National Art Gallery of Lviv, who is credited for saving the Nahirny family archive.
Church of St. Michael the Archangel, Pobuk, Skoliv region. Designed in 1927, built in 1927-1928. Torn down in the early 1960s.
Working alongside Mr. Voznytsky and also after his death in 2012, Ms. Filevych sifted through and researched the vast amount of architectural renderings and plans, photographs, letters and personal documents, and eventually connected with the Nahirnys’ descendants in the United States: Wasyl Lew Jr. (grandson of Vasyl Nahirny) and his daughter Khristina.
Twenty years after first working together on the family archive, Ms. Filevych and Ms. Lew, with Mr. Slobodyan, have brought to fruition the restoration of the Nahirny legacy.
As Ms. Lew writes: “Our journey to restore their contribution to Ukrainian sacral architecture has taken us from the archives of the Lviv Gallery of Art, which houses the original architectural drawings and photographs rescued from a dumpster on Okruzhna Street in Lviv in 1989, through the villages of Lviv, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk oblasts to photograph 45 Nahirny churches in 2011-2013.”
With help from the Shevchenko Society in the U.S. and the support of family, friends, priests, parishioners, scholars, architects and archivists, this two-volume project serves as a historical record of sacral architecture in Ukraine, and Vasyl and Evhen Nahirnys’ contributions to that national history.
“100 Nahirny Churches: the Churches of Evhen Nahirny” will be presented by the authors on February 20 at the Shevchenko Scientific Society, 63 Fourth Ave., New York, at 5 p.m. For more information readers may call 212-254-5130.
For more information about the 100 Nahirny Churches project, or to purchase the books, visit the companion website at http://100nahirnychurches.com/.
Church of the Assumption of the Holy Mother of God, Ripne, Rozhnyativ region. Designed in 1931, built in 1932.