Incredible by its scale exhibition “Axion Estin. Orthodox Art of the 15th-21st Centuries in Private Collections” is open in Donetsk Exhibition Center “Art-Donbas.” Nearly 300 icons were presented by collectors from Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, and Donetsk.
The exhibition was blessed by Metropolitan of Donetsk and Mariupol Ilarion.
Art Director of the Exhibition Center “Art-Donbas” Kateryna Kalinichenko explained: “A year ago we already had an exhibition of Orthodox art – it received a wide response among visitors. Today, many artifacts are exhibited for the first time, the exhibition covers a huge range: North of Russia, Palekh, Stroganov School of Icon Painting. The icons presented here can’t be called simply paintings – it is art.”
The exhibition was named in honor of the late 19th century icon Theotokos Axion Estin exact dimensional copy of the miraculous image Axion Estin from Karyes Monastery on the Mount Athos. And the oldest exhibit is the icon Saint Nicholas the Miracle Worker (shoulder-length) from the end of the 15th-beginning of the 16th century painted by a master from Biloziria. The icon is stored in the collection of the curator of the exhibition Oleh Zdanovych from Donetsk.
The “heart” of the exhibition is the four images of the end of the 16th century painted by an unknown master: Annunciation, Ascension, Assumption of the Mother of God, and Holy Trinity. The icons were taken from the temple in the village of Berezhna Dubrova in Arkhangelsk oblast destroyed by the Bolsheviks. “To save the relics from ruin, the faithful dismantled the iconostasis and some of the icons were taken by the keeper of the temple. ‘Good people’ told the authorities about what happened and the keeper had to emigrate, but after the war she came back to Ukraine. She took care of the relics for as long as she lived, but after she died her children kept them in a barn. Tiles broke above the place where the icons were stored, rain poured through the hole, bright sun rays reached the masterpieces,” said Oleh Zdanovych.
Zdanovych points out: “In the Soviet times, icons were purchased for pennies and were massively exported abroad. In modern Russia people, who buy art items in the West and return them to their homeland, become national heroes. In Ukraine, it is not clear why a person, who wants to do something like this, has to pay taxes of 30 percent – that’s why Ukrainian artistic heritage remains scattered abroad.”
The exhibition is the first step to make the dream of Zdanovych – to open a museum of Orthodox Art in Donetsk, come true. “Today, my collection is stored in the vaults. I won’t be able to have it with me forever and I don’t have an intention of selling it. I want people to come to Donetsk to get proud of our cultural progress.”
Archpriest Heorhii Huliaiev supports this idea: “A person who keeps an icon, even is he is not very religious, does a good deed in the eyes of God. There is a stereotype: an icon should be in a temple. But we do not insist on this: icon can be stored at homes and museums just as well.” “Some relics need constant care and, therefore, cannot be placed in a church. And exhibition similar to this one contribute to preservation of national treasures. People get the understanding: blackened old icon can and should be preserved,” stressed Zdanovych.
Exhibition will be open until June 12.
