The Grand Antiques Salon is the third large-scale creative project launched by the Ukrainian House. The first two — Art Kyiv and the Grand Sculptural Salon — are staged in the fall and spring, respectively. The Grand Antiques Salon continues until Sept. 14, and Art Kyiv will open in October.
According to its press release, the Antiques Salon aims to “form a civilized art market, develop its infrastructure, popularize Ukrainian art at home and abroad, and familiarize Ukrainians with the finest achievements of world art.” The organizers stress the need to demolish the stereotypes surrounding the antiques market. They insist that collecting art is “an alternative way to preserve the national cultural and artistic heritage,” not a pastime for wealthy people.
The current show is divided into two parts. The first, located in the main foyer, features items from private Ukrainian art collections. This is the first time that Kyivites are able to view the paintings and sculptures of the Ecole de Paris that flourished in the 1920s-1930s. Among the artists associated with this school are Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brancusi, Jacques Lipchitz, Marc Chagall, and Mane-Katz. Some Ukrainian artists are also among the celebrated representatives of the Ecole de Paris, such as Alexander Archipenko, Hannah Orlova, Mykola Hlushchenko, and Oleksii Hryshchenko.
Separate exhibition halls are filled with Orthodox icons from the 16-th-18th centuries and western Ukrainian wood sculptures from the 17th-18th centuries (from the collection of President Viktor Yushchenko). Among the collectors who supplied the bulk of the art on display are Ihor Voronov (Pablo Picasso, Ossip Zadkine, Jacques Lipchitz, Amedeo Modigliani, Constantin Brancusi), Yurii Tsvengrosh (Yakov Shapiro, Sofia Levytska, Mykola Vaker, Oleksandr Paliuk), Leonid Komsky (Vasyl Khmeliuk, Oleksii Hryshchenko), and others. Some collectors who loaned their works of art chose to remain anonymous.
“Antique collectors are rather reticent individuals,” said Natalia Zabolotna, the Ukrainian House director, “although the ice has been broken in the past two or three years. Collectors are now more willing to display their collections.”
The second part of the Antiques Salon consists of collections that are the calling cards of 40 Ukrainian antiques galleries, most of which are based in Kyiv, with only two in Odesa and Lviv.
During the press conference before the opening ceremony, collectors Ihor Voronov, who loaned his collection of works by Auguste Rodin and Alexander Archipenko to the last Sculptural Salon, Ihor Panamarchuk, and Leonid Komsky spoke mostly about the problems of the antiques market in Ukraine, of which Ukrainian legislation is the biggest one.
“There are several problems in Ukrainian art market and our culture in general,” said Ihor Panamarchuk, an art patron and founder of the private museum Cultural Treasures of Ukraine. “One of them is the government’s totally mistaken attitude to the importation of works of art. In this respect, Ukraine is one of the poorest countries in the world because its treasures were constantly being taken away and sent to Russia, and then to Nazi Germany. The kind of tax on the importation of art that we have, 25 percent, doesn’t exist anywhere else.
“Moreover, people who buy a piece of art won’t bring it to Ukraine because they know they’ll have to pay 25 percent of its cost. A similar law was annulled in Russia four years ago, and people started bringing works of art worth billions of dollars. When that law was abolished, a number of Russians who were storing their art works abroad brought them home. The collections in the Hermitage Museum are worth more than our entire heavy industry. It’s no secret that the market value of Picasso’s works is 80 billion dollars. This sum is equal to the entire Ukrainian budget.
“I would very much like this law to be abolished so that we can bring world masterpieces to Ukraine, because this is the basis on which the cultural education of the nation rests,” Panamarchuk said at the press conference.
Unfortunately, the Ukrainian political community has no time for such “trifles” as culture or the nation’s education.
