The gallery is displaying its own collection of the 1950s-1980s graphics – about 200 works by Soviet-era Ukrainian artists. The project “Collection: The First Step” is particular in that the exhibited items change daily at 3 p.m. Therefore, even visiting the gallery more than once, the spectator will be able to find new meanings.
“The project’s idea is that the collection is a living organism. That’s why the exhibited pictures always circulate,” says Mykyta SHALENNY, a well-known artist, the project curator. “We popularly tell the spectator about what graphics is. To this end, every picture is furnished with a sign that helps one ‘read’ it. There are also six audio guides in the hall. The visitor can put on earphones and hear about the artist’s personality and technique, the pictures’ symbols, and thus reconsider and reopen this graphics. For, although these artists worked under the burden of totalitarian censorship, they sought ways to evade the latter.
For example, in “Haymaking,” a series of pictures by the Kyiv-based artist Nadia Lopukhova, we can see women who work in the field and rest after a hard workday. But even these figures of female toilers cannot disguise a desire to show femininity and hidden sexuality. Female images are the leitmotif of Lopukhova’s oeuvre. Her heroines are women who saw the horrors of occupation during World War Two. There are also among them the Ukrainian heroines glorified by Taras Shevchenko, Lesia Ukrainka, and in folk songs, each of them having particular magic and presence of mind.
The artist Heorhii Yakutovych also enthused about Ukrainian history and ethnography. He interpreted Ukrainian folk ballads in his works, and his graphics show a strong influence of Hutsul motifs. Incidentally, he was the production designer in such epoch-making Ukrainian films as Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors and Zakhar Berkut. The exhibit displays his sketches and illustrations to literary works.
The heroes of pictures by the Kyiv-based artist Mykola Popov are ordinary people who shoulder the burden of the entire country’s troubles. Inspired by the works of Taras Shevchenko and philosopher Hryhorii Skovoroda, he pictured monumental figures mostly by means of lithography. Like many artists of his time, Popov described the horrors of the occupation and the postwar reconstruction of this country. It will also be right to call him a traveling artist. With pencil in hand, he toured all the former USSR countries, Europe, the Middle East, and the US. Sketches served as diaries of his travels.
You can see the industrial dawn of Ukraine in the pictures of Kharkiv artist Vasyl Myronenko. His industrial landscapes show factories of the Dnieper, Azov, and Donbas regions in the 1950s-1960s. The graphics are full of energy, strength, and special solemnity. His follower, our fellow countryman, Mykola Rodzin was also called “chronicler of the industrial Dnieper region,” for he used to sing praises of rapid-pace reconstruction and achievements in postwar Dnipropetrovsk.
“What unites all these artists is the period in which they worked and high professionalism,” says the curator of the project “Collection: The First Step.” “What is more, they applied diverse techniques and represented various regions of Ukraine.”
The project authors also want to let visitors know the culture of collecting. For collection is the cradle of a cultural space, a departure point for the establishment of galleries and museums. “Artsvit,” Dnipropetrovsk’s largest art center, also began with a collection of graphics. Art critics, culture experts, and collectors speak at the gallery about their vision of collecting. The project authors have recorded interviews with them. These videos are shown at the exhibit. You can see the collection and make your comments on it until February 9 in the “Artsvit” gallery at the address: 4a, Sichovykh Striltsiv (former Artema) St., Dnipropetrovsk. The gallery is open from Tuesday to Saturday between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. Admission is free.
