Igor Abramovich about the "Modern Ukrainian Art. Portraits of the Artists" book

08/25/2015

The idea for the book came as a continuation of a larger project to popularize Ukrainian modern art which I have been working on for more than 5 years. The project includes the organization of exhibitions and workshops in Ukraine and abroad, documentation in catalogs and albums, promotion of Ukrainian artists on the international art forums, biennales and auctions. The book became a logical extension of this series, because it is not only important to show art, it is also necessary to talk about it. I wished that there was an informative and entertaining book written by a professional in the accessible language.

Source: http://pl.com.ua/igor-abramovich-o-knige-sovremennoe-ukrainskoe-iskusstvo-portrety-hudozhnikov/

We are familiar with an art critic and curator Galyna Sklyarenko since 1999. Our first project was the joint work on the "Terrain Orientation" exhibition for the National Art Museum of Ukraine in 2013.

Galyna is not only one of the most professional Ukrainian art critics, she was also at the forefront of the newest stage in Ukrainian art since the Soviet collapse and knew many heroes of the book at the beginning of their journey. I offered her to be the author, while I was looking for a publisher and dealing with other organizational matters. Thus began our work on the "Modern Ukrainian Art. Portraits of the Artists", which lasted about two and a half years — with an interruption due to events in the country in the winter of 2014, that made all Ukrainians put priority on other things for a certain time.

There are portraits of Ukrainian artists of the so-called "perestroika" generation in the book: a starting point of the modern Ukrainian art as it is, and at the same time, the point of return of Ukrainian art from behind the iron curtain back into the world art process. This is not a ranking of the most successful and famous, nor an attempt to provide an exhaustive overview of Ukrainian art, but rather a historical section. The choice of heroes and the works that illustrate their creative evolution in the book belongs to Galyna Sklyarenko. Neither I nor the artists interfered in the work, because that was the author's task: to assemble an overall picture from portraits of bright individuals and to trace the interconnections, to place the characters on the cultural map of Ukraine and the world. Besides that, the book is also a documentary evidence, an opportunity to gather constantly elusive history in one place and record it.

The first thing that we realized while working on a book is that the project can not be limited to one publication. We want to release two more books, one of them will be a sequel of the "Portraits" and will introduce readers to those who just did not fit in the first volume. The second will be devoted to the youngest generation in Ukrainian art. Right now we are preparing Ukrainian translation of the "Modern Ukrainian Art. Portraits of Artists", and negotiating with several Western publishers about the release of the English version.

Our book and the series it starts is dedicated to all the art lovers who are at the beginning of this fascinating path — novice collectors, young art critics, thoughtful viewers. Current Ukrainian art, which arose on the border of East and West, Europe and Asia, totalitarianism and new freedoms is incredibly distinctive, paradoxical and powerful phenomenon. I hope that our book will be something of an art-alphabet of modern Ukraine and that it will help readers make their first discoveries in this area.

Article and photos from the "Public people" website