‘Nova Generatsia’ i mystetskyi modernism v Ukraini [The New Generation and Artistic Modernism in Ukraine]

The most thorough study of Ukrainian Panfuturism in the larger art context is finally available in Ukrainian!

Professor Emeritus of Art History at The Ohio State University Myroslava M. Mudrak’s monograph was first published in English in 1986. “We’ve long awaited this book! Much has happened since then,” writes art historian Heorhii Kovalenko in his foreword. “The Ukrainian avant-garde has slowly but surely won, rather, won back its place in the context of global modernism. But just as before, there’s still a lack of analytical studies of the Ukrainian avant-garde in the plastic arts. Myroslava Mudrak’s book is the only one. And in all this time it hasn’t aged a bit. It was made (this is precisely this constructivist word that I wish to use here) rigorously and solidly. And it is written in such a way that you cannot but agree with it: ] comprehensively, carefully, convincingly.”

The author has significantly expanded and augmented the Ukrainian version of her monograph, yet she managed to retain its concise and clear structure: there are three parts “Panfuturism,” “The Painted Image,” and “The Printed Page” each divided into two chapters. “Blurring the border that separated the visual arts from literature, the Panfuturists ultimately transformed the printed word into a unique realm of visuality—the absolute expression of ut pitura poesis, or ‘as is poetry so is painting,’” writes Myroslava Mudrak.

Mykhail Semenko, Vasyl Yermilov, Borys Kosarev, Anatol Petrytsky, Dan Sotnyk, and the many other artists of Nova Generatsiia are this book’s protagonists. “The lively exchange of ideas between Ukrainian writers and artists, filmmakers and photographers, set and graphic designers, theater directors and architects, evidence of which we see on the pages of Nova generatsiia, show us just what early 20th-century Modernism in Ukraine looked like—extraordinary and inimitable,” the author points out at the end. “Semenko’s journal fought for any opportunity for the further growth of Ukrainian art culture in all aspects that were generally intrinsic to Modernism.”

Myroslava Mudrak has selected small but effective illustrations to accompany her ideas and her conclusions. They enrich the volume and allow the reader to enter into the world of Nova generatsiia—“the final frontier for both the Ukrainian and the Russian avant-gardes”—precisely what this journal was in the late 1920s.