THE RIVER OF LIFE

26 вересня 2014 - 31 жовтня 2014

The project choice wasn't accidental. Our gallery's great feature is the numerous collection of Ukrainian graphics. Today, when the true love for our country blooms in our hearts, the ArtSvit team strives not only to preserve the best examples of Ukrainian art, but also to acquaint our guests with our cultural heritage.

The development of Ukrainian graphics as a holistic phenomenon is caused by the active national-cultural rise in the early twentieth century. Taking love to the motherland as a basis for their stories, the artists formed original schools, very different, but complementing each other. For example, the Lviv graphic is based on a synthesis of the classical European etching and avant-garde searches in the early 1920s and 1930s. While the Dnipropetrovsk school absorbed the authenticity of the eastern region with its industrial capacity.

The art of graphics is both democratic and elitist. Stank graphics, arranged in complicated print art or incredible author’s technique, of course, attracts the attention of a true connoisseur. "Graphics is an aristocracy of art," – the art critic Sergei Makovsky noted at the beginning of the twentieth century. Why graphics? Probably, mainly working with only two colors – white and black – the artist manages to disclose all the whirlpool of human life, the fluidity of nature, tenderness of feelings in a concise and conventional way. The graphics opens up endless possibilities for the embodiment of artistic life images. Jewelry and hard work of a master can’t leave anyone, who touches this kind of art, indifferent.

The gallery’s collection is represented by the works of well-known Ukrainian artists, who have embodied the best traditions of their schools on paper, therefore our exposition attempts to present the diversity of techniques and plots as much as possible.

As part of the exhibition closing, we present the second edition of the book about collectible graphics "Art Geography. The River". It included the exposition, as well as reference materials for the cognitive excursion in particular graphic techniques.

The exhibition of Ukrainian graphics "The River of Life" is our first step in the way of exploring the citizens with the rapidly developing art, and artists continue to experiment with unexpected techniques and materials.