Ukrainian art has been affected in many ways throughout the war. Over the centuries, art has proven to be a way for people to cope and spread hope. Art flourishes and blooms in dark times, and the Russian Invasion isn’t an exception.
On the road to Lviv, western Ukraine’s largest city, there are posters with messages like “Don’t Run Away, Protect Ukraine” and “Russians, Go F— Yourselves.” Lviv is a city with many old palaces and squares, as well as churches dating back to the Middle Ages.
One famous museum in Lviv is the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum. On the first day of the war, the museum had to close and relocate many important art pieces. An exhibition of the modernist painter Oleska Novakovsky had to be canceled, which was going to be one of the first events ever since the pandemic. The museum’s director is concerned about losing the reputation of the museum’s art. Many scholars regard the museum as the greatest example of Baroque-era (1700’s) religious art in Central Europe. Most of these art pieces were moved away, with one major example being the Bohorodchany Iconostasis.
The Bohorodchany Iconostasis was created between 1698 and 1705 and was painted by Yov Kondzelevych and a team of 20 other artisans. It’s 42-feet-high, and 36-feet-wide crowned by a huge gold depiction of the Crucifixion. An iconostasis is a wall of religious figures and symbols. One community leader called it “the pinnacle of Ukrainian art.”
The iconostasis was originally displayed at the Manyava Orthodox Monastery in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. In 1782, monasteries were forced to shut down, and the art piece was relocated to the town of Bohorodchany, in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church of Holy Trinity, who paid the equivalent of $12 for it. In WWI, it was relocated again, and got disassembled and reassembled in Warsaw when the war ended. Andrey Sheptytsky then bought the iconostasis for $4,000. Lastly, it was disassembled again when the Soviet Union took over, before being reassembled in 2013.
Many street artists have been affected by the war as well. Denys Matelin is an artist from Lviv who was abandoned by his father when he was 19, and since then has always had to deal with war. He believes that war shouldn’t be something to remember for the tragedies, but something to reflect on. “You need to find a perspective to understand the bombs,” he says. Matelin often works with symbols of the Soviet Union, subverting the usual stereotypes associated with them. He tries to praise the Ukrainian forces in his artwork while removing the horror and tragedy from them.
Another street artist from Lviv is Viktor Kudin, who is both an architect and an artist. When war first broke out, he traveled to Lviv and raised funds for the Ukrainian army while continuing to paint. He thought that Russia’s invasion was a real moral shock and felt overwhelmed by stress and “negative feelings” from the war. Deciding to draw to relieve his stress, he painted the city, houses, and streets. His paintings display a transformed landscape that portrays Lviv in a unique way. The paintings include graffiti insulting Putin, posters indicating locations of shelters, black smoke from factories, and a Ukrainian flag holding out against the wind. One key feature is that humans aren’t included in his drawings. Kudin believes firmly that Ukraine has “got to destroy Russia. We’re going to kill them all.”
Sources:
https://smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-race-to-save-ukraines-sacred-art-180980019/
https://theconversation.com/ukraine-diaries-art-in-the-face-of-the-war-184199
On the road to Lviv, western Ukraine’s largest city, there are posters with messages like “Don’t Run Away, Protect Ukraine” and “Russians, Go F— Yourselves.” Lviv is a city with many old palaces and squares, as well as churches dating back to the Middle Ages.
One famous museum in Lviv is the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum. On the first day of the war, the museum had to close and relocate many important art pieces. An exhibition of the modernist painter Oleska Novakovsky had to be canceled, which was going to be one of the first events ever since the pandemic. The museum’s director is concerned about losing the reputation of the museum’s art. Many scholars regard the museum as the greatest example of Baroque-era (1700’s) religious art in Central Europe. Most of these art pieces were moved away, with one major example being the Bohorodchany Iconostasis.
The Bohorodchany Iconostasis was created between 1698 and 1705 and was painted by Yov Kondzelevych and a team of 20 other artisans. It’s 42-feet-high, and 36-feet-wide crowned by a huge gold depiction of the Crucifixion. An iconostasis is a wall of religious figures and symbols. One community leader called it “the pinnacle of Ukrainian art.”
The iconostasis was originally displayed at the Manyava Orthodox Monastery in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. In 1782, monasteries were forced to shut down, and the art piece was relocated to the town of Bohorodchany, in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church of Holy Trinity, who paid the equivalent of $12 for it. In WWI, it was relocated again, and got disassembled and reassembled in Warsaw when the war ended. Andrey Sheptytsky then bought the iconostasis for $4,000. Lastly, it was disassembled again when the Soviet Union took over, before being reassembled in 2013.
Many street artists have been affected by the war as well. Denys Matelin is an artist from Lviv who was abandoned by his father when he was 19, and since then has always had to deal with war. He believes that war shouldn’t be something to remember for the tragedies, but something to reflect on. “You need to find a perspective to understand the bombs,” he says. Matelin often works with symbols of the Soviet Union, subverting the usual stereotypes associated with them. He tries to praise the Ukrainian forces in his artwork while removing the horror and tragedy from them.
Another street artist from Lviv is Viktor Kudin, who is both an architect and an artist. When war first broke out, he traveled to Lviv and raised funds for the Ukrainian army while continuing to paint. He thought that Russia’s invasion was a real moral shock and felt overwhelmed by stress and “negative feelings” from the war. Deciding to draw to relieve his stress, he painted the city, houses, and streets. His paintings display a transformed landscape that portrays Lviv in a unique way. The paintings include graffiti insulting Putin, posters indicating locations of shelters, black smoke from factories, and a Ukrainian flag holding out against the wind. One key feature is that humans aren’t included in his drawings. Kudin believes firmly that Ukraine has “got to destroy Russia. We’re going to kill them all.”
Sources:
https://smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-race-to-save-ukraines-sacred-art-180980019/
https://theconversation.com/ukraine-diaries-art-in-the-face-of-the-war-184199