While a vast survey of Ukrainian modernism in London appeared to open at the end of June without a hitch, the show’s journey to the UK was not an easy ride.
Konstantin Akinsha, the curator of the Royal Academy of Arts’s “In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine, 1900–1930s,” spent several frustrating years trying to convince Western museums to host the show. But he kept hitting roadblocks: some were uninterested, and some were simply unable to take it, due to political tension. At long last, the exhibition has arrived in the British capital, however, having first appeared in Madrid in 2022.
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The exhibition tells the story of a group of modernist artists who helped define Ukraine’s cultural identity. It is therefore deeply ironic that Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and his claims that the country doesn’t exist, not to mention the Russian military raining missiles down on its museums, eventually made it possible.
“In the Eye of the Storm” maps the upheaval in Ukraine at the start of the 20th century through artistic experimentation. No Ukrainian city had its own art academy at the turn of the 20th century, so artists traveled to European capitals like Paris and Munich to study. When they returned to Ukraine, they brought with them new ideas rooted in Cubism and Futurism. However, by the mid-1930s, Joseph Stalin’s rule was becomingly increasingly distrustful of Ukrainian artists and their modernist experiments, bringing an end to this particularly fertile period.
The exhibition serves a double purpose: it brings a vital and largely under-recognized chapter of modernism to the British public, but it also saves these works on view from being destroyed by Russia.
ARTnews spoke to Akinsha to discuss how he expects this exciting yet tragic period in Ukrainian history to resonate in London, and how he managed to haul the artworks out of a war zone.
This interview has been edited lightly for concision and clarity.
ARTnews: How was the idea for “In the Eye of the Storm” born?
Konstantin Akinsha: I wanted to organize this exhibition long before the war. Ukraine was viewed as a lost land—Europeans weren’t really interested in my country. This doesn’t mean, however, that exhibitions of Ukrainian art weren’t held before—there was some international interest in the 1990s when Ukraine announced its independence. There was one good exhibition in Zagreb in Croatia from 1990 to 1991, titled “Ukrainian Avant-Garde.” To be honest, though, this was the only decent exhibition.
I really wanted to organize a serious exhibition of Ukrainian modernism, and I nearly did it in 2018. It was agreed that my exhibition would be shown at the Museum Ludwig Budapest, which offered two floors—one to exhibit contemporary Ukrainian art (which I also curated), the other to show Ukrainian modernism. However, at the last minute, Budapest clashed with Kyiv because Ukraine adopted a new education law that the Hungarians interpreted as oppressive to the Hungarian minority in Ukraine. This was used as a battle cry because Hungarian elections were going on at the time and the Hungarians froze all financial projects with Ukraine, so we couldn’t get insurance for our exhibition. It was cancelled. The contemporary show did happen, though, and we were awarded an American prize [the YOU-2 GFAA Award] for the best show of the year. The modernist paintings never crossed the border.
After this, I tried to place the modernist exhibition in different museums, but I was rejected everywhere. A German museum director refused to recognize the difference between Russian and Ukrainian art, and other museums said the artworks were beautiful but refused to show them because they were working with Russians, which made it difficult to work with Ukrainians as well. So ironically, at the end of the day, the best promoter of my exhibition was Vladimir Putin. He ultimately made it possible by invading Ukraine.
Who supported you in making the exhibition a reality?
Two weeks before the war, I wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, telling Ukrainians to evacuate immediately, but my plea fell upon deaf ears. As a result of this denial, the museum collections of Mariupol, Melitopol, and Kherson were lost, removed by Russians or partly destroyed. When the war started, I decided that, if they don’t want to evacuate the collections, I had no choice but to start my own war. I was adamant that we had to move the paintings that eventually comprised “In the Eye of the Storm” abroad because the prospect of the show would be more acceptable than an evacuation. We made an appeal to the presidential administration. To my surprise, our undertaking was supported by President Zelensky. Once we were given the green light, my co-curators Katia Denysova and Francesca Thysen-Bornemysza worked heroically to make it happen with the help of Yuliia Lytvynets, the director of the National Art Museum of Ukraine (NAMU).
How did you manage to transport the artworks?
We loaded the trucks with the paintings and sent them on their way with a military convoy and state guarantees instead of insurance. Then, more drama ensued. As we left Kyiv early one morning, the largest bombardment of Ukraine targeting the entire territory started. Luckily, by 10 PM the same day, the convoy reached the Polish border. We were ready to open the champagne. Not so fast, though, as a stray rocket exploded in Poland killing two people and creating a general feeling that World War III was starting. The Poles closed the border, and the Ukrainian ambassador in Madrid worked around the clock to convince Warsaw to allow our trucks into Poland. By some miracle, the trucks arrived in Madrid on time for the exhibition. It made a very big splash. We had an unbelievable amount of press. Even Chinese TV turned up.
I’ve read that you are not a fan of the term “Ukrainian avant-garde.” Why?
I prefer the term “modernism.” Today, Ukraine talks about Russian stealing its art but it was not just Russia, it was the international art market. When these avant-garde works entered the western market in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, demand was high and supply was low, so the various characters involved started smugling art out of Ukraine from artists who were not connected to Russian art world in any way, like Oleksandr Bogomazov and Vasyl Yermilov. When these artworks reached the West, they were classified as being of the Russian avant-garde because nobody wanted to hear complicated explanations about the difference between Russia and Ukraine. Another reason I don’t like the term is because Ukraine incubated a unique and local school of modernism. It had many connections to Russia but it had influences from other countries too, including Germany and, in the late ’20s, Italy.
“In the Eye of the Storm” includes artists who were not Ukrainian, but who left an imprint on the development of Ukrainian art. Some of these artists spent just a short time in Ukraine but helped ferment modernist trends. One example is Alexandra Exeter. If you look on Russian Wikipedia, you’ll read that she is a Russian artist; if you read Ukraine’s Wikipedia, you’ll see she was Ukrainian; and the French Wikipedia says she was French. The truth is, she had roots in all three cultures. In reality, she was born in Belarus to Greek and Jewish parents. In Ukraine, she played an instrumental role in Kyiv’s Futurist school because in her early career she was connected to Paris and Rome. She was the founding mother of this modernist trend in Ukraine. Then she formed the School of Ukrainian Theater Design, then moved to Moscow and Paris. Her role in Ukraine was extremely important.
Also, take Kazymyr Malevych. He was born in Ukraine and even claimed in his memoirs that he was Ukrainian, but he worked in Belarus and Russia. Of course, he was Polish by ethnicity, but what we are focusing on is his presence in Kyiv in the late ’20s, when Russia was freezing artistic policies and Ukraine was saving liberally artistic policies. He was invited to Kyiv and granted professorship in the Kyiv Art Institute. He spent two years in Kyiv teaching and publishing his treaties in the main Ukrainian art magazine Nova Henetatsiya (New Generation) all the while influencing students from the institute. For this reason, he is included in the exhibition.
We are not only focused on Ukrainian artists. There is a special focus on a Jewish group called the Kultur-liga, which was created in Kyiv during the short-lived independent Ukrainian state, and which was perhaps the most important arm of the Jewish cultural renaissance. At this time, a young artist from the Pale of Settlement, areas where Jews were permitted to reside in the Russian empire, came to Kyiv. It was a cultural explosion that influenced Ukrainian artists too. It’s artists who influenced the formation of this national Ukrainian modernism, and who didn’t try to nationalize it.
How important is it to separate Ukraine’s artistic identity from that of the Soviet Union?
It’s important and it’s impossible. Ukrainian identity was formed by the Soviet Union—and was then destroyed by the Soviet Union. After the revolution, the Bolsheviks adopted the policy of so-called Rootization, which was called Ukrainization in Ukraine. This policy had many purposes. One of them was to destroy the remains of the administration and structure of the Russian Empire. Ukraine was granted cultural autonomy. Ukraine’s education and literature, for example, were supported, as was the Ukrainian language. In some way, this Ukrainian identity was created by the system, and then it was mercilessly destroyed during Stalin’s repression.
Ukraine paid an unbelievable price. The entire intellectual elite was basically wiped out. Artists in Ukraine were not only punished as formalists but as Ukrainian nationalists, so more Ukrainian artists were killed than Russian ones during this time. In addition to the repression there was an artificial famine which cost millions of lives. Now, it’s understandable why Ukrainians are fighting for their identity, which obviously exists. Mr. Putin repeats every other day that Ukraine’s identity and culture doesn’t exist, but “In the Eye of the Storm” proves that it does.
Is Ukraine’s avant-garde market riddled with fakes, like the Russian avant-garde market?
Unfortunately, yes. It is very interesting that this avalanche of fakes coincided with the first interest in the so-called Ukrainian avant-garde, which started to form in the early ’90s. We have a massive amount of low-quality fakes. To name the most faked artists: [Vasyl] Yermilov and [Alexander] Bogomazov. These fakes are being sold at secondary auctions.
Between the first exhibition in Zagreb and our exhibition in the Royal Academy, practically all other efforts, almost without exception, to show Ukrainian modernism were spoiled by using them as a vehicle to exhibit fakes.
How many modernist paintings have been destroyed, not only since the start of the war in Ukraine, but since the Stalinist repressions?
We are talking about multitudes of modernist works. Due to the anti-modernist policy after the 1930s, scores of paintings were confiscated from museums and institutions and put in special secret repositories, and the idea was to destroy all of them. However, most of this destruction was prevented by World War II. After the war, many paintings were saved by the director of Ukraine’s National Museum in Kyiv, who stored them in cellars. He obviously knew the Soviet system very well, because he marked all of the paintings with zero value, and do you need to destroy something with no value? No. So this saved many paintings.
Since the beginning of the Russian aggression, some important modernist paintings vanished during the Russian occupation of Kherson. It is not clear if they were removed by the Russians to Crimea or stolen.
What is your outlook for the future of Ukrainian museums amid Russia’s ongoing invasion?
We are in a very difficult situation because the war is not over yet. The destruction is continuing. Museums are in danger. “In the Eye of the Storm” has inspired other museums. For example, there is a very important collection of Byzantine icons that was sent from the Khanenko Museum in Kyiv to the Louvre and exhibited in Paris on long-term loan. I am very pleased about this. Other Ukrainian museums are sending exhibitions to Switzerland and Germany.
But after this war is over, a lot of Ukrainian museums need very serious reshuffling. It’s funny to say, but in a certain sense, this war brought the cultural isolation of Ukraine to an end. The international museum world is much more open to Ukraine that it was before. Ukrainian museum curators now have much closer contact with Western institutions, and I hope that when this war is finally over, and Ukraine hopefully joins the European Union, the reform of Ukrainian museums happen.
As a curator and a US citizen who was born in Ukraine, how frustrating is it that it has taken a war to draw the Western world’s attention to Ukrainian modernism?
It is extremely frustrating. As I told you, the best PR agent for “In the Eye of the Storm” was Mr. Putin, but of course, I would have preferred to do it without his help. Unfortunately, this was impossible. It has been frustrating that Western museums have not paid attention to Ukrainian modernism. If you want to have a revised and serious history of art, it’s vital to be open to developments in other parts of the world.