Modernism in Ukraine, hung in Madrid
An exhibition of early twentieth-century Ukrainian art opened in Spain at the end of 2023. The works were rescued, and the argument they make is one most visitors had never encountered.
At the end of 2023 an exhibition of Ukrainian art from the first three decades of the twentieth century opened at a major museum in Madrid, drawn largely from Kyiv collections.
Two things at once
The works were out of a country under bombardment, which was the practical point. But the exhibition also made an argument, and the argument was the more important half: that there was a distinct Ukrainian modernism, that it was extraordinary, and that it was almost entirely destroyed by the repressions of the 1930s — its artists executed, imprisoned or silenced.
Why most visitors had never heard of it
Because for most of the twentieth century these works were either in storage, unattributed, or catalogued as belonging to a general Soviet school. Restoring the correct label to a painting is quiet work and it changes what a viewer understands.
The pattern of the period
The same arrangement repeated across European institutions through this period: a museum offers climate-controlled safety, and in exchange the public gets to see what it was protecting. Both sides gain, which is why it kept happening.
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