Naive art or modern marvels?

In response to r*ssia’s invasion, there has been more active celebration of Ukrainian traditions, art, and language, particularly amongst younger people.

Ever since the Russo-Ukrainian war escalated, there has been a push to reclaim Ukrainian culture and heroes from the Russified past. The r*ssification of Eastern Europe has claimed cultures, icons, artists, musicians, and intellectuals as r*ssian. With the current invasion of Ukraine, r*ssia is fervent in destroying Ukrainian language and culture, claiming famous artists, such as Kazimir Malevich, as their own. However, this problem doesn’t stop there, other Ukrainian artists such as Sonia Delauney have been claimed by the West while Maria Prymachenko was voided as primitive due to her folk art motifs. There is a growing need to educate ourselves on this otherwise “mysterious east” and move on from the Chernobyl jokes. r*ssian aggression has spotlighted Ukraine to the whole world, and we need to break through this r*ssian shadow.

In response to r*ssia’s invasion, there has been more active celebration of Ukrainian traditions, art, and language, particularly amongst younger people. Personally, I have spent my life inside a void of cultures. Am I too Australian to be Ukrainian or am I too Ukrainian to be Australian? The art world has become a sounding board for my identity, however, until the r*ssian invasion, no one even knew where and what Ukraine was. These artists broke the mould that I myself am trying to redefine. 

A big artistic inspiration for me has been Kazimir Severinovich Malevich (Казими́р Севери́нович Мале́вич), who is most famous for his pioneering work in the development of Suprematism, a non-objective abstract art aimed to explore concepts and formal elements of composition. He always seemed like some sort of an artistic genius, so far from my own context, until I found out our shared past. Malevich was born in Kyiv in 1879 - his parents; Polish father Seweryn and Ukrainian mother from Poltava, Ludwika. He identified as Ukrainian. Apart from his formal artistic education, he was heavily inspired by traditional Ukrainian culture and village life. Surrounding himself with master folk craftsman, Malevich delighted in the colourful geometric embroideries and sprawling painted walls which unfurled natural figures throughout the home. In his later life, Malevich taught at the Kyiv institute of Art, which at the time gained fame as the “Ukrainian Bauhaus”. Ukrainian expert on Malevich and art critic, Professor Dymytro Horbachev, points out that “the closest analogy to Suprematism [would be a combination of]: geometrical paintings of houses in Podolsk, wax-resist ‘pysanka’ eggs with Ukrainian patterns and magic code elements (fire, earth and water).” Malevich’s art also focused on the impact of Stalinism, subverting the use of peasant figures in Soviet propagandistic imagery on the Holodomor famine of 1932-33, a man-made famine on the Ukrainian people imposed by the Soviet Union. His pencil drawing known as “Where there’s a hammer and sickle, there is death and famine”, shows three eerie figures whose faces are replaced by the hammer and sickle, a cross and a coffin. Along with other Ukrainian artists and intellectuals, Malevich was a victim of Stalinism. The Kyiv art academy was ‘cleansed’ of “bourgeois intellectuals” and Malevich himself was arrested and tortured leading to various health issues which he later died of in 1935.

Sonia Delaunay (born Sarah Eliverna Stern, Сара Еліверна Стерн), born to Ukrainian-Jewish parents, is a legendary figure in the French avant-garde scene and the first living female artist to be exhibited in the Louvre. Together with her husband, French painter Robert Delaunay, they created the Orphism art movement (also called Simultaneism), an artistic style noted for the use of strong colours and geometric shapes. Her patchwork quilt made for her new-born son harnesses these modern stylistic qualities. She comments on the spontaneous creation that; "I had the idea of making…composed of bits of fabric like those I had seen in the houses of Ukrainian peasants.” The quilt layers earthy sharp tones broken up by warm pinks and oranges to create an image of rolling meadows and welcoming pastures. From a jumble of shapes woven together, we see a cultural maternal practice rejoicing in movement and relishing in contrast. Her use of art in fashion, especially in the dazzlingly colourful costumes for the Ballet Russes, further recall her childhood memories of Ukraine. Delaunay refers to the “pure” colour and bright costumes of Ukrainian peasant weddings. She lived a successful artistic career integrating furniture, fabrics, wall hangings and clothing into her art practice which extended until her death in 1979 aged 94.

Maria Oksentiyivna Prymachenko (Марія Оксентіївна Примаченко) born 1908 in Kyiv is one of the most culturally rich and famous Ukrainian folk painters, who self-taught art by focusing on traditional craft methods and experiments. In a time where the Soviet Union quashed ‘lesser cultures’, Prymachenko flourished. Pablo Picasso even once said, after visiting a Prymachenko exhibition in Paris, “I bow down before the artistic miracle of this brilliant Ukrainian.” Her paintings are fantastical explosions of colour, almost psychedelic explorations of rural life in Ukraine — whimsical scenes of beasts wrapped up in vivacious movements of tight patterns. They are informed by a deep knowledge of a rich cultural tradition, yet are classified as naive art by the West. Though Prymachenko’s later paintings may at first glance read as outright silly, they follow her embroidery works in quietly affirming the singularity of Ukrainian culture and identity. She died in Ukraine in 1997, living long enough to see the fall of the Soviet Union which for so long suffocated Ukrainian culture. However, recently her works have blown up on the global stage due to their presumed destruction by the deliberate r*ssian shelling of the Ivankiv Historical and Local History Museum. 25 of her paintings were reportedly lost, yet local people were able to save at least 10 of her works from the fire.

A hidden world of Ukrainian culture continues to persist amidst and against the current r*ssian invasion; a whole community of contemporary Ukrainian artists, musicians, and writers who are struggling to keep our traditions alive. Malevich, Delaunay, and Prymachenko all broke the art world with their innovative views on what art can aspire to be through the lens of their Ukrainian upbringing. For this, we continue to be in awe of their work and celebrate their contributions, and for this we reclaim them as our own.