Six Ukrainian artists you should know
Published on 28 July 2024
Early 20th century Ukraine was a melting pot of cultures, identities, and politics. Here are six artists who taught, influenced, and shaped modernism in Ukraine.
Alexandra Exter
Alexandra Exter played a pivotal role in bringing Western avant-garde movements to Ukraine. After studying at the Kyiv Art School, Exter moved to Paris where she befriended Robert Delaunay and Fernand Leger. Here, she began experimenting with Cubo-Futurism, which combined the abstract colours and forms from Cubism with the dynamic energy of Futurism. On her many trips back to Kyiv, Exter pioneered Western avant-garde movements by mounting exhibitions and publishing articles promoting Cubism and Futurism, among others.
Exter's work often blended modernism with Ukrainian folk elements, but her innovative theatre design really stole the show. She translated Cubo-Futurist shapes, colours, and movement into vibrant costume and set design. In 1918, she opened a private studio in Kyiv and went on to train the next generation of modern artists.
Sarah Shor
Sarah Shor began attending painting classes at the Kyiv Art School aged just 14. A few years later, Alexandra Exter invited her to exhibit her work in Kyiv. Like Exter, Shor’s style was strongly influenced by Cubo-Futuristism and other artistic movements from the West.
Shor later became associated with the Kultur-Lige (League for Culture), a society founded by Jewish artists, actors, writers and musicians to fuse the European avant-garde with Jewish artistic tradition. Horse Riders combines the hope of a new age with a reworking of the Jewish heritage and traditions.
Oleksandr Bohomazov
Hailed as the unknown genius of the Ukrainian avant-garde, Oleksandr Bohomazov was a prolific painter and theorist. By the end of his short life, he had mastered several art styles and published countless essays on colour theory and painting. His work is recognisable for its bold colours and striking composition. Despite never travelling West, his close friendship with Alexandra Exter kept him up to date on Western art trends like Cubism and Futurism, which he adopted.
However, under the Soviet Union, political loyalty became how artistic achievement was measured, so Bohomazov began painting labourers and peasants whilst retaining his distinctive style. He died from tuberculosis in 1930, aged 50.
Davyd Burliuk
Davyd Burliuk, the self-proclaimed ‘Father of Russian Futurism’, was a pivotal figure in the development of radical art in Ukraine. In Kyiv in 1908, he organised an exhibition with the group Zveno (The Link), which included Oleksandr Bohomazov and Alexandra Exter. It was a critical and commercial failure, but it marked one of the first avant-garde exhibitions in Eastern Europe.
Horses were a common theme in Burliuk’s work as they related to the Cossacks, the local military force and self-governing polity which had come to symbolise Ukraine’s nationhood. In his 1921 work Carousel, Burliuk reinterprets a traditional Ukrainian subject using the latest cubist and futurist artistic trends.
Kazymyr Malevych
Kazymyr Malevych pioneered a new form of artistic expression he called Suprematism, which aimed to abandon any depiction of natural form in favour of abstract depictions of feelings and spirituality.
Later in his career, he taught alongside Bohomazov at the Kyiv Art Institute, which had been restructured to conform with the Soviet system of higher education. Malevych's Suprematism didn’t go down well with Stalin, who considered abstraction a type of “bourgeois” art that could not express social realities. Malevych abandoned abstraction to focus on a more figurative style, as seen here.
Alexander Archipenko
Alexander Archipenko started his art education at the Kyiv Art School alongside Oleksandr Bohomazov and Alexandra Exter. However, unlike Bohomazov who never ventured West, Archipenko left Ukraine for good and moved to Paris in 1908. Alongside Picasso, he was one of the first artists to incorporate the ideals of Cubism into sculpture; he wanted to create a new way of looking at the human figure.
After emigrating to the USA in the 1920s Archipenko reconnected with his heritage, becoming an active member of the local Ukrainian community and exhibiting at the Ukrainian pavilion in Chicago as part of the Century of Progress World's Fair in 1933.
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