Last Monday the Lviv Palace of Arts saw an event, Historical Justice, organized on the initiative of the regional branch of the National League of Ukrainian Artists. It should be noted that installation of the busts of prominent Ukrainian artists on the facade was part of the original project of the palace the construction of which began, incidentally, in 1987, almost a quarter of a century ago. Now, in 2014, among the immortalized are Ivan Pinzel, an outstanding mid-18th-century late baroque and rococo sculptor, founder of the Lviv school of sculpture, “the Ukrainian Michelangelo” (the bust’s author is Ivan Samotos); our genius and prophet Taras Shevchenko (by Yosyp Sadovsky); Oleksandr Arkhypenko, an outstanding 20th-century Ukrainian and American sculptor and painter, one of the founders of cubism in sculpture (by Liubomyr Yaremchuk); artist Fedir Senkovych, an active participant in the civic and cultural initiatives of Lviv’s 17th-century Orthodox community (by Theodosia Bryzh); Mykhailo Boichuk, an outstanding 20th-century muralist painter, leader of the “Boichuk group” (by Mykola Posikira), and Oleksa Novakivsky, an outstanding late 19th-early 20th-century painter, a versatile master and teacher (by Emanuil Mysko).
In the view of Orest Sheika, Lviv oblast councilor, member of the standing commission on culture, historical and cultural heritage, spiritual renaissance, and the mass media at the Lviv Oblast Council, this event is very important for the Lviv region’s cultural milieu, for it shows that Lviv’s Palace of Arts was and still is an object of culture rather than a platform for purely commercial ventures.
