Olena Onufriv

Lviv Art School

Lviv is a major city in western Ukraine. The city is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically also for Ukraine’s neighbour, Poland. The historic centre of Lviv with its old buildings and cobblestone roads has survived the Second World War and the Soviet presence largely unscathed. The city has many industries and institutions of artistic higher education such as the National Academy of Arts and the Lviv State College of Applied Arts. It has a philharmonic orchestra and The Lviv Theatre of Opera and Ballet. The historic city centre is on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Fundamentals of Lviv artistic school of a new era were founded in small private schools-studios of the city in mid-XIX - early XX century. As a rule there were mainly graduates of Art Academies of Krakow, Vienna, Rome, Munich, who taught in these schools. Lviv are closely linked throughout its history with Western culture, and at the end of XIX - XX centuries it was in constant economic and cultural relationships with many cities of Poland, Austria, Germany and France. This situation contributed to the involvement of local artistic potential to actual artistic processes of that time.

In 1920-1930 an artistic outlook of the new generation of Lviv artists was actively formed in the environment of art school, founded by O. Novakivsky. During 1923 - 1935's there were more than 70 students studying at that school and many of them were already engaged in cultural and artistic life of the city in 1930-s. Thanks to O. Novakivsky's artistic school such strong and creative personalities as S. Hordynskyi, V. Lasovskyy, R. Selskiy, G. Smolskaya and others appeared.

New forms of communication between artists - discussions, intercultural and inter-ethnic contacts on the basis of creative problems - became a driving forces of active artistic life of the city at that time. Founded by a group of artists, architects, photo artists association «Artes» (1929 - 1935), consisted of ethnic Poles, Jews and Ukrainians who followed the ideas of "formizm" (Polish version of the avant-garde expressionism and cubism trends), but in the same time were focused on radical artistic movements, such as Constructivism, Abstract art, Surrealism, Dadaism. Being flexible and enlightened by the Western European artistic life, because all "Artes" associates have been abroad, particularly in Paris, they strongly opposed against the conservatism and provinciality in art.

The special dynamics of artistic situation in Lviv, in all totality of its formal, plastic and creative investigations in between the World Wars was provided by the most popular creative activity of AIUA (Association of Independent Ukrainian Artists, 1931 - 1939), whose members except of Lviv artists also included those living and working at that time in Paris, Prague, Vienna, Berlin, Krakow, Warsaw. In order to consolidate Ukrainian artistic forces around the national ideas, to promote Ukrainian art and to use European art experience, AIUA deployed a comprehensive fundamental work. Exhibitions organized by association, were concentrated on two main directions. From the one hand they were used to support relationships with world modernism leaders (already at the first exhibition in 1931 among the exhibited works there those of P. Picasso, F. Leger, A. Derain, J. Severini, R. Dufy, M. Chagall). From the other hands AIUA intended to promote and consolidate the authority of the Ukrainian artists both globally and locally (exhibition of contemporary Ukrainian graphics, [1932], part of which in 1933 was shown in Berlin, Prague, Rome, and part "bookplate division" - at Bookplate World Exhibition in Los Angeles.). Directing Ukrainian artists onto the world aesthetic standards, AIUA and their supporters, were convinced that Ukrainian artist will be interesting to the world only when he will show perfected art form, reveal his deep, national identity and will represent a part of worldwide beauty, which could only be born at his land.

One of the most talented students of former "Artes" association leader R. Selskiy, C. Zvirynskyy, mastered and synthesized the experience gained, and evolved new, different from that of his teacher creative method. Picturesque-plastic values he sought inside the harmony of the hidden depths of abstract forms, discarding images of human figures. His works, though separated from the surrounding objective world, direct form of painting aesthetics into the depths of human psyche and emotions. Roman Selskiy highly valued creative approaches of his student and understood new methods as expansion of the scope of so called "Ukrainian colorism", refined artistic sense of which he always tried to impart to young perspective students. Somewhere in the middle of 1950 "Evening Studio of Carlo Zvirynskyy" was launched in his own apartment. Followers, and loyal friends of K. Zvirynskyi were gathered in this school and such well-known Lviv artists as A. Bokotey, I. Marchuk, P. Markovych, R. Petruk, A. Minko, Z. Flinta, L. Medvid, always spent some time there, communicating and discussing new artistic trends. This "Studio" spiritually united, implemented creative needs of young artists and that time, protecting their open minds from the heavy pressure of social realism and official artistic policy.

Despite adverse conditions and historical disasters, directions generated by the artists of late XIX - early XX centuries, as well as active artistic movement of the interwar decades has laid a core of Western Ukrainian artistic school, energy of which continued to exist not only in the aforementioned forms of underground communication, but above all, inside the mind, attitude and outlook of young artists of 1950 - 1960.

These things emphasized in 1960's and follow the cultural phenomena known in USSR intellectual environment as "the motion of sixties". Revival of the creative initiatives, obvious shift in favor of freer artistic expression inspirited Lviv art community, teachers and students of the Art Institute of decorative and applied arts. Painting of R. Selskiy, C. Zvirynskyy, V. Patyk, I. Marchuk, P. Markovich found in his brush-plastic structure reminiscences of Western art trends associated with the aesthetic practices of postimpresionizm, fovizm, constructivism, from experiments with dominant color and the desire to the exterior decoration. However in the work of another group of artists: E. Lysyk, L. Puskas, I. Skobalo - you can see the manifestations of the willing to search for individual self-understanding in the paintings and adequate means for displaying the internal state of affairs that anticipate them towards the expressionism because of their spirituality and towards the surrealism imaginative and emotional features.

Against the backdrop of radical changes in socio-political situation in Soviet Union during "perestroika" times a new generation of artists began to recover prewar cultural and artistic dynamic values and traditions with worldwide communication aesthetic practices, which seemed to be lost under the control of art ideology towards "the right communist direction". Various independent artistic associations and informal groups appeared in that time, such as "The Path" (1988), "Centre of Europe", "Club of Ukrainian Artists" (1989), "Gerdan" (1990), "Sichkarnia" (1991) and others.

Redirection of Lviv art environment towards the new forms of contemporary avant-garde art becomes noticeable since the mid 1990's. Exhibitions of young artists were known for their freedom formal solutions, fantasy, which often was on the edge with provocation. Sheer irony and grotesque, as a means of upholding the freedom of its own creative personality were inherent among painting works of V. Kostyrko, J. Koch, V. Kaufman, J. Shymin and others. Hyperrealist forms of absurdity and caricatures, which were seen in the surrounding reality, played an important role often transforming into unique artists' conceptions.

Artistic process of last decades forms a new formal and aesthetic quality of the Lviv art. One of the vectors of Lviv School of painting concept aims to implement the formal aesthetic and philosophical contexts searching. This is the art of fully formed creative person working in a manner of free improvisation on the verge of figurative and abstract art, of attraction to or departure from the figurative and the complete rejection of it. Well-known representatives of this vector of Lviv School of painting are M. Buryak, V. Bazhaj, I. Yanovych, A. Maksimenko and others. With their creativity, growing intellectualization of Lviv, define contemporary art and recover lost features of elitism, continuing at the same time to develop values offered by K. Zvirynskyj, L. Medvid, A. Minko.