Ukrainian art, the art on the territory of Ukraine.
Early days: The oldest evidence goes back to the Paleolithic. On the northern Black Sea coast existed from the 7th century BC. Until the 10th century AD, urban centers of ancient and Byzantine culture (including Olbia, Kerch, Cherson). Between the Don and the southern Bug was the settlement area of Scythian and Thracian tribes with a rich material culture, including high-quality goldsmithing work (especially with stylized animal ornaments). The migrating peoples of the Goths, Huns and Avars left their traces since the 3rd century AD.
Middle Ages: From the first half of the 1st millennium BC In the development of art and culture of the Eastern Slavs. After Christianization in 988, there was a strong Byzantine influence on the art and culture of the Kievan Rus, which formed the basis of later Ukrainian and Russian art (Russian art).
The first churches decorated with frescoes and mosaics (Cathedral of the Savior in Chernigov, 11th century; Cathedral of St. Sophia in Kiev, 11th century) were built by Byzantine builders. With the collapse of the Kiev Empire at the beginning of the 13th century, local art centers emerged. B. in Chernihiv, Volynia, Galicia. Favored by the political union with Lithuania and later Poland came Western Ukraine in the 14./16. Century increasingly under Western European cultural influence. The fortifications (e.g. in Chotyn) partly have Gothic features, with fortified churches often merging Gothic and Orthodox forms. New building types such as the rotunda were added to the traditional three-aisled cross-domed churches (St. Basil’s Church in Vladimir-Wolynski, 14th century). Town halls and trading centers in the western Ukrainian cities were also based on Western models. In the wall painting, Eastern church image forms asserted themselves alongside a simultaneous tendency to loosen up the Byzantine-Old Russian tradition and the penetration of folk elements.
Renaissance to Classicism: At the transition from the late Middle Ages to the Renaissance, especially in the 16th and 17th centuries. Century, emerged in the icon painting with the parsuna (mutilated from “persona”, portrait-like representations) the first forerunners of secular portrait painting. The Russian I. Fjodorow, who published the first Slavic ABC book in Lemberg in 1564, contributed to the spread of letterpress printing in the Ukraine, which in turn gave inspiration to wood and copper engraving. Important representatives of Ukrainian history, landscape and portrait painting in the 17th century were F. Senkowitsch and S. Korunka. With the 18th century, Ukrainian art increasingly flowed into Russian art development. This is how Ukrainian painters became like A. P. Lossenko, D. G. Lewizki, W. L. Borowikowski, W. A. Tropinin trained at the St. Petersburg Academy.
The annexation to Russia in 1654 resulted in a cultural dualism, as the art of the eastern part of Ukraine was more closely related to Russia, while the western part remained dominated by Europe. In the sacred building the type of the stone one- and three-domed church had finally prevailed. In the 17th century, weak Renaissance influences were followed by a veritable flood of baroque forms, also in eastern Ukraine (St. Bernard Church in Lemberg, 1606–30; Church of the Protection of the Virgin Mary in Charkiw, 1689 ff.; Church of All Saints in Kiev, 1696–98). Two- to three-storey town houses and aristocratic palaces in the style of the so-called Ukrainian Baroque, which translated the types of the older wooden house into stone and lavishly designed the facades, were built v. a. in western Ukraine (including Kiev, Lemberg, Perejaslav [today Perejaslaw-Khmelnyzkyj]), where figural sculpture also followed western influences (e.g. numerous epitaphs). Some classicist buildings from the second half of the 18th century were designed by B. F. Rastrelli and A. J. Sacharow, the v. a. worked in Russia. The folk architecture preserved its independence: wooden churches with multi-tiered roofs and galleries (important, inter alia, the churches in Mukacheve, 18th century).
Modernity and the present: In the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, eclecticism and historicism shaped the architecture (Opera in Kiev, 1901, by Wictor Sreter, * 1839, † 1901; Opera House in Odessa, 1884–87, by F. Fellner and Hermann Helmer, * 1849, † 1919), next to it around 1900 the Art Nouveau (eg “Bessarabischer Bazaar” in Kiev, 1910-12). After the October Revolution of 1917, residential and social buildings predominated in the urban area; large industrial complexes emerged (including the Dnjeproges hydropower station, 1927–32). The constructivism typical of many buildings in the 1920s (e.g. in Kiev the House of Doctors I and II, 1928–30 and 1930–31, respectively, by Pawel Aleschin, * 1881, † 1961) was replaced in the 1930s by representative Soviet neoclassicism, which came to full bloom after the Second World War (rebuilt Kreschtschatik Boulevard in Kiev, 1948–53). Abram Mylezky (* 1918) used elements of functionalism in the construction of the Ministry of Transport and Road Construction (1976) in Kiev; Georgi Chorchot (* 1939; investment bank in Kiev, 1996–97), who mostly works in a collective with other architects, represents a style oriented towards the international style of the 1990s.
In the 19th century, Ukrainian painting was close to the socially sensitive realism of the Russian traveling painters (Peredwischniki) (e.g. Mykola Pymonenko, * 1862, † 1912; Kiriak Kostandi, * 1852, † 1921). In addition, the poet and painter Taras Shevchenko (* 1814, † 1861) was particularly prominent.
Comparable to architecture, active contacts with Western European metropolises in the visual arts had an effect on Ukrainian art since the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. B. to the group »TJuRCh« (association of South Russian artists, inter alia with Wladimir Isdebsky, * 1882, † 1965) as well as to representatives of the avant-garde, some of whom moved to Moscow, Paris or the USA (D. Burljuk; Alexandra Exter; K Malevich; A. Archipenko et al.). The new understanding of realism after 1920 was in painting, which processed elements of naive art and stylized folklore, v. a. the circle around Mychailo (* 1882, † 1938 [1939?]) and Timofi Bojtschuk (* 1896, † 1922). A new social aesthetic and the demand for an “art of the masses” followed artists such as. Fyodor Krytschewsky (* 1879, † 1947), Anatoli Petryzky (* 1895, † 1964), Karpo Trochymenko (* 1885, † 1979), who designed subjects of the revolutionary period and the civil war, but also still lifes and landscapes. At the same time, avant-garde currents (e.g. Alexander Bogomasow, * 1880, † 1930) were gradually replaced by the socialist realism that had dominated since the 1930s. In 1922 the State Art School was founded in Kiev, in 1933 the Association of Fine Artists of the Ukraine, largely responsible for the direction of the arts in accordance with the Stalinist doctrine. The most important Ukrainian artists after 1945 include the painters and graphic artists Tetjana Jablonskaja (* 1919, † 2005) and Kostjantyn Filatow (* 1926) as well as the sculptor Wassyl Borodaj (* 1917, † 2010). In the 1960s and 70s, painting and graphic art, among others. produced Wilen Tschekanjuk (* 1932), Volodymyr Nenado (* 1935, † 1981), and in sculpture. a. Vyacheslav Klokow (* 1928, † 2007); in the 1980s and 90s in painting, among others. Wiktor Bilyk (* 1937) and Natalja Gontarowa (* 1954, † 1999), in the sculpture v. a. Felix Betliemski (* 1954).
Some representatives of the post-avant-garde joined the circle of Moscow nonconformists from the late 1950s, including: I. Kabakov, who moved to Western Europe and New York, Wadim Sidur (* 1924, † 1986), B. Mikhailov and Juri Lejderman (* 1963). As in other post-communist countries, the Ukrainian retro-avant-garde has been addressing a multifaceted and ironic theme since 1991 in painting, sculpture, photography and media art, preferring a »collective memory« and its own identity within the global society of values (including Arsen Savadov, * 1962; Sergei, who is active in Moscow Bratkow, * 1960; Miroslaw Kulchitsky, * 1970; Wadim Chekorsky, * 1970).
