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First, it is necessary to mark a rather small but very important exhibition of Alexander Archipenko’s works at the Ukrainian Museum of Fine Arts. The Picasso of sculpture, as his contemporaries called him, Archipenko was born and grew up in Kyiv. Here he studied at the Arts School in 1902-1905 together with Volodymyr Burliuk, Bohomazov, and Aristarkh Lentulov, then left to Moscow and later to the West.
In France he was among the avowed leaders of Cubism, making friends with Braque, Picasso, and Apollinaire. When the Dadaist war cry thundered over Paris, Archipenko shook the foundations side by side with the most famous troublemakers of the European culture that later became its yardsticks: Francis Picabia, AndrО Breton, and Tristan Tzara. “Archipenko is a closed man, like a locked house,” was the characteristic given him by the Dadaists. Indeed, our brilliant compatriot followed only the rules of his own talent. Having moved to America, he became there a classic of plastic form, a maestro of sculpture, in which capacity he returned to Ukraine.
The exposition in the Ukrainian Museum is composed of nine refined graphic nudes, a small landscape, two busts, Shevchenko the Prophet (1935) and Conductor Mengelberg Leading Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (1925), and a female statuette of his pre-Dadaist period. Each of this works has its own merits. Mengelberg bust is an incarnated impulse, a passion fixated in its high point. The cubist figurine is remarkable with its precipitance and light forms combined with an almost pagan expression. What sticks in one’s memory most is an untraditional Shevchenko, reminding one of a stern and inspired Sufi, and the nudes: Archipenko was inimitable in painting and sculpting women.
Of course, the exposition’s small scale restrains one from wild enthusiasm. The exhibition presents only the few “units of issue” which were gathered together from the museums and private collections of Lviv and Kyiv. However, this is a step forward towards acknowledging Archipenko as a Ukrainian master, along with the global value of his creative legacy.
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Olena Pryduvalova’s gouaches one-woman show opened at the Maisternia Gallery at the Kyiv Artist’s House. This artist stands aloof in the Kyiv artistic community, never joining any manifestos or groups. Perhaps there is no need. City landscapes presented at the exhibition are vivid, full of taste and almost childish astonishment at the reality depicted, as well as everything Pryduvalova does.
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At the Karas Studio the Dialogue with Quotation project came to its conclusion, which had been hosted by this one of the most prestigious Kyiv galleries since early spring. Yevhen Karas’s idea was to get together all interesting Kyiv painters, encouraging them to exhibit their new paintings in every stage of the project. This idea gave birth to a sort of multipartite novel. In any case, every exhibition had a separate name and was accompanied by a quite sophisticated commentary.
It is hard to understand what kind of conclusion the organizers were planning to draw. However, we had got a chance to view new first-class works by Badri Gubianuri, Matviy Vaisberh, Tibery Silvashy, Vladyslav Shereshevsky, Oleksandr Zhyvotkov, Andriy Bludov, and many others (over twenty names) during all the season. It is a pity that the artistic marathon did not culminate in any spectacular ending, since, as it seems, the goals for this strange tournament were not clearly defined.
On the whole, all the exhibitions of the early winter have a common pleasant property, representing convincing evidence for the artistic handicraft. This is a doubtless and so far irrefutable Kyiv tradition, in spite of all the high pressrun deeds by the adepts of actuality.
