Exhibition view

22.12.2006 – March 2007

THE OBJECT AND THE IMAGE OF THE EPOCH
(a landowner’s mansion, a peasant’s house and a city apartment from the late 19th  to the early 20th century in paintings and decorative objects, and in objects of daily life)

Curator: Olha Zhbankova
 
The aim of the exhibit is to show the epoch from the late 19th to the early 20th century in its two aspects: ordinary and aesthetic.  The exhibit shows more than 200 works (portraits, landscapes, genre paintings by masters of Ukrainian art, as well as pieces of furniture, clothing, dishes etc.) It consists of three parts: the landowner’s mansion, the peasant’s house and the apartment in the city, organized according to certain stages of the development of Ukrainian culture.  

1820s–1840s was the time of blossom of the culture of landowners as their mansions became cultural centers. Thanks to the invitations of the mansions’ owners, who wanted to immortalize their families as well as the exteriors and interiors of their mansions, the students of St. Petersburg Academy of Art (Vasyl Sternberg, Oleksiy Voloskov) and Western artists, in particular the Austrian master Holpein, often visited Ukraine.
 
In 1860s-1880s folk motifs marked a strengthening of the national identity in Ukrainian culture. The exhibition shows one of the most significant works of Taras Shevchenko, The Peasant’s Family. For the first time we show 80 unique photographs of the Ukrainian peasants, acquired during the prerevolutionary time. They were collected by the founders of the National Art Museum of Ukraine Mykola Biliashivs’kyi and Danylo Scherbakivs’kyi. 

At the turn of the 20th century the motif of the city became popular in art. For the first time, we exhibit genre paintings by Kiriak Kostandi, Petro Nilus and Yevhen Bukovets’kyi from the collections of art museums in Mykolayiv and Kherson oblasts.  We hope that the exhibit will bring real joy to art lovers.

The exhibit shows works from the collections of the National Art Museum of Ukraine, the art museums of Dnipropetrivs’k, Vinnytsya, Zaporizzhya, Sumy, Chernihiv, Kherson oblasts’, Lviv Gallery of Art, Chernihiv History Museum, the State Museum of Ukrainian Folk Decorative Art, the Museum of One Street in Kyiv, National Museum of History of Ukraine, Ivan Honchar Museum, Taras Shevchenko National Museum, the Museum of Theatre,  Music and Cinema Art of Ukraine, private collections in Kyiv, and the LLC “Epoch. Antiques.”

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