Exhibition view

Vladyslav Mamsikov. Cycle Track. 1983

 

National Art Museum

presents exhibition project

Silent Protest of the 1970s

20.09-20.10.2013

Opening: September 19 (Thursday), 7 pm

Curator: Yevhen Bereznytskyi

 

In the National Art Museum of Ukraine the first exhibition of the artists of the 1970s opens - Silent Protest of the 1970s. In the exposition more than 120 artworks is presented, most of which is shown to the general public for the first time.

 

The project presents the phenomenon of Ukrainian art of the 1970s and reveals to the viewer one of the least explored periods in the history of Ukrainian culture. 1970s is the time of Paradzhanov and Stus, it's the age of the construction of such industrial giants as Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant and the Baikal-Amur Mainline and the period of the industrialization of Siberia. It is the time of internal immigration of soviet citizens, of hairstyles a-la The Beatles and shabby jeans, of reel tape recorders with the tapes of Volodymyr Vysotskyi whose semi-official concerts gathered thousands. Silent Protest is a mirror of the era, an opportunity to remember "how it was", to feel nostalgia and understand the life, desires, and hopes of the generation of the 1970s.

 

"1960s, eventfully reach in external and internal politics, hopes for political changes in USSR, and the following despair gave birth to the new type of outlook of the 1970s", comments project curator Yevhen Bereznytskyi. "Intelligentsia never attempted to protest actively against the grayness and the ideology of equalization. Artists turned to intimate experiences and thoughts, focused on exploring the individuality that fell out from the "gray masses". This generation created new aesthetics: experiments with the form and the technique of a drawing, use of the color in presenting the perception of an object became the new approach to the representation of the surrounding world. The silent revolution took place that step by step destroyed socialist realism from the inside."

 

The members of the new art elite preferred lyrical landscapes and still lives, abstract forms and playing with different styles of the previous epochs. At the same time folklore citations and usage of mythological and literature images gained importance.

 

The artists of the 1970s took part in official exhibitions but a lot of them joined the underground movement, created their own space and found their viewer in "apartment exhibitions".

 

"Silent Protest of the 1970s" presents art and graphic works of more than 20 authors; Vladyslav Mamsikov, the developer of the "stern" style, Zoia Lerman, the master of lyrical painting, Oleh Sokolov, nonconformist from Odesa, Petro Bielienok, the founder of "panic realism", and Valentyn Reunov, the master of still life, among them.

 

Simultaneously on September 2 the project to support Silent Protest of the 1970s starts on korrespondent.net. The readers are suggested to remember childhood, adolescence, and maturity and share your own story about the 1970s.

 

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