Ukrainian Avant-Garde: Main Centres, Leading Artists, Key Concepts

Ukrainian Avant-Garde: Main Centres, Leading Artists, Key Concepts

The Ukrainian avant-garde is part of the world's artistic movement of the early 20th century that prioritised radical innovation in visual culture. At the same time, it relied on its own national traditions and was conditioned by the local context. Deprived of statehood, Ukraine in the early 20th century became not so much an artistic centre as a kind of ‘laboratory’ where ideas were born and forms of new art were formulated. The avant-garde in Ukraine was inclusive, symbiotic and the result of the work of Ukrainian, Jewish, Polish, and Russian artists, whose ideas and artistic practice later influenced the development of Eastern European art of the 20th century. In the 1920s, Ukraine was the site of not only avant-garde production, especially movements such as constructivism, but also progressive art education. The lecture will analyse several artistic centres, such as Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, and Kherson as loci for the production of innovative artistic concepts. 

Oksana Barshynova, Deputy Director of Exhibitions at the National Art Museum of Ukraine (NAMU, Kyiv), is an art historian, curator, lecturer and researcher. Her research interests are the history of Ukrainian art from the second half of the 20th century to the present, history and theory of collecting and exhibiting contemporary and modern art, and regional and decolonial studies. She co-developed new exhibition practices and served as a curator of 20th-century and contemporary art at NAMU. More recently, she has headed exhibition and research teams at the museum. She was a researcher at the Musée d'Orsay and the MNAM/Centre Pompidou, Paris (PAUSE Programme) in 2022-2023.

All welcome.  Bring your friends!!

We look forward to you joining us on 28th Nov!

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