Earl of Clancarty reviews 'In the Eye of the Storm'

“Carousel” by Davyd Burliuk, 1921 | Image The Burliuk Foundation

4 minutes reading timeJuly 23

The story of how, in 2022, the treasures of the National Art Museum in Kyiv were removed from Ukraine for safekeeping has the makings of a Hollywood action movie. Packed into trucks and driven across Ukraine on a Tuesday (since Russia usually bombs on Mondays), they reached the Polish border only to find it closed because a missile had landed nearby. There followed lengthy diplomatic discussions before the trucks were finally allowed to pass.

Much of this work, supplemented by carefully selected pieces from other collections, forms the basis of a new exhibition at the Royal Academy, the final stop on a European tour. It is inevitably as much a political event as an art exhibition, with the curators openly challenging Russia's claim to the works, in order to reassert a Ukrainian artistic identity.

It is worth noting, however, how quickly art history – from our own perspective – can be rewritten in response to geopolitical changes. The catalogue for the 2014 Kazymyr Malevych exhibition at the Tate (Ukraine is not mentioned in the index) tells me unequivocally how much Malevych was a Russian artist – despite Ukraine’s independence in 1991 (for the second time this century). Malevych, Alexandra Exter and Sonia Delaunay are just a few of the internationally renowned names among the many other artists featured in this new exhibition, which begins with the beginning of modernism (especially the cubism developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque) and ends with the tragic Stalinist purges of the 1930s, when social realism was imposed on art throughout the USSR. Throughout the exhibition, paintings and sculptures are presented, with a room dedicated to theatrical scenography.

It is sobering to realize that we are looking at works by artists who have been executed

The period is complicated. Ukraine’s tumultuous history makes it difficult to separate art from events. Many artists traveled, some went into permanent exile. Alexander Archipenko emigrated to the United States in the 1920s, stopping over in Paris. Delaunay was born in Odessa but never returned to Ukraine after his childhood. But some of the most astonishing works here are by artists we don’t know, having spent most of their lives in Ukraine. These include the works of Oleksandr Bohomazov Landscape, Locomotive (1914-15) an explosion of colour and rhythm, depicting a train that seems to transform into a landscape (or is it the other way around?). There is also Vasyl Yermilov's remarkable painting Self-portrait (c. 1922) from the post-Revolutionary Constructivist period, a painted wood and metal relief whose expression seems to change depending on the angle from which it is viewed. A more socially sensitive art developed later in the 1920s, with artists turning to concerns such as poverty and the plight of Jewish communities.

What then of the claim that the works presented here have an essentially Ukrainian identity? There is a compelling argument that Ukrainian artists transformed Cubism by introducing colour and movement, often from folk art, into a formerly static and monochrome art. One of the last rooms of the exhibition is devoted to the most consciously nationalist work in the show: the group surrounding Mykhailo Boichuk. It is sobering to realise that one is looking in this room at the works of artists who were executed, alongside so many other members of the intelligentsia of the Soviet empire. It is hard today to imagine how such discreet yet subtle art could have provoked such a reaction.

This is a fascinating exhibition, set up at the very moment when Russia is doing its best to destroy Ukrainian cultural identity. Anyone interested in the current Ukrainian conflict should definitely visit it to better understand the nature of that identity over the last century.

The Earl of Clancarty is a Crossbench peer

In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine, 1900s-1930s
Commissioners: Konstantin Akinsha, Katia Denysova, Olena Kashuba-Volvach and Ann Dumas
Place: Royal Academy, London W1; until October 13

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