MADRID — Dozens of modern artworks removed from
Kyiv to protect them from Russian strikes that have already done huge damage to
Ukraine’s cultural heritage were set to go on display at a Madrid museum
yesterday.
اضافة اعلان
The works on show at the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum
of Art as part of the “In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine 1900-1930”
exhibition include oil paintings, sketches, and collages.
Francesca
Thyssen-Bornemisza founded “Museums for Ukraine”
which is seeking to showcase Ukrainian art, using the museum which houses her
late father’s collection for the exhibition.
The Madrid exhibition is one of a number of showings of
Ukraine’s cultural heritage across Europe, as well as an effort to raise
awareness of the threat posed to the war-torn country’s artistic legacy as
fighting grinds on.
Curators say it is one of the most comprehensive surveys of
Ukrainian modern art in the period between 1900 to 1930.
Many of the works have hardly been seen outside of Ukraine.
The exhibition will run at the museum until April 30, and then go on show in
Cologne in Germany from September 2023.
‘Vision’ of Russia’s destruction
President
Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video shown at a
preview on Monday that “this is a vision of what Russia is trying to destroy”.
After weeks of intense preparation, the pieces were loaded
into two trucks in mid-November just before the Ukrainian capital came under
intense missile fire.
As it headed to the Polish border the convoy avoided passing
infrastructure likely to be attacked, Thyssen-Bornemisza said.
When the convoy reached the border, they found it shut
because a missile had just landed in a Polish village, killing two people.
Thyssen-Bornemisza said she then asked Ukraine’s ambassador
to Spain for help, who in turn contacted “every politician he knew between
Poland and Ukraine”.
“It took them 12 hours that night — they managed to get
through,” she said.
UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural agency, says over 200
cultural sites in Ukraine, including museums, have been damaged since Russia
invaded Ukraine in February.
Krista Pikkat, UNESCO’s cultural and emergencies director,
said in October that “cultural heritage is very often collateral damage during
wars — but sometimes it’s specifically targeted”.
‘Talk about the war’
The exhibition follows a chronological order.
It starts with the 1910s when Ukraine was part of the
Russian empire and ends in the 1930s when several artists died during purges
carried out by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, said one of the show’s curators
Katia Denysova.
Most of the works come from the National Art Museum of
Ukraine.
Among the works on display is “Composition”, a
Cubist-inspired painting by Vadym Meller and a realistic portrait of a soldier
by Kostiantyn Yeleva.
“It is important for us to continue to talk about the war,”
Denysova said. “But we also want to show with this project that Ukraine has so
much more to offer.”
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