Art in Ukraine, Part I:

The Lord, The Panvitalist, The Purist, The Optimist

As most Ukrainians, artists too are affected by the Russian aggression. Yet artists have their own way of articulating their experience of wartime. For some, war is just part of life, for others art is a weapon that helps fight the aggressor and others still think that the experience of war simply cannot be expressed. In the following two-part article, a younger generation of Ukrainian artists, most of them based in Kyiv, talk about their experience of the war, their specific artistic form of expression and their view on art in general.

The Lord

Like so many others, Artem fled Kyiv when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. He was gone for forty days. While away, Artem was not able to produce art. Not because he was gone from home, but because he had a creative block. When Artem got back to Kyiv, he had a whole library of images related to war, waiting to be processed, but looking at them, “it simply did not flow.”

So, he went back to his unfinished works that he had started before the invasion. At that time, Artem was trying to find out where he belonged as an artist, and what the meaning of this whole new situation was. Very soon, he realized that people were exhausted by everything related to the war: the news, art and so on. Artem thought that he could contribute by doing something that was not about the war, and when he finished his paintings and posted them online, they were positively received. This gave him hope, he had found himself again and knew what his art should be about. It gave people a distraction to think about something that was not war. What Artem did was to work in his own style.

Artem’s style can be categorized as naïve art, and even though he feels flattered when people tell him that his style reminds them of Ukrainian icon Maria Prymachenko, he answers: “I didn’t find the style, the style found me.” For Artem, art is part of his self-expression and how he feels. His own creations inspire him to produce more. When he paints, a whole process begins, the color combinations, the theme behind the theme, creating something new in the process. Like Prymachenko, Artem has no academic degree. He dropped out of art school after three months to move into street art. Then he transitioned from graffiti and the streets to the galleries. It took him a couple of years to establish himself as an independent artist, and he got fired from a couple of side jobs, but today Artem’s wish has come true: he can live from his art.

Artem has only one single painting that deals with war. It is a portrait of “Lord”, a Malinois dog serving in the Ukrainian military. He didn’t even want to finish the painting, but then a friend who worked for Ukrainian Vogue asked Artem to contribute to the new edition. Artem grew up in Zaporizhzhia and the family had a German Shepard, a guard dog of whom Artem was afraid. At the same time, however, the dog also protected the family. That is how Artem saw Lord, and that is why he made the portrait very majestic and intimidating – in order to convey the idea of protection and safety. “This dog had all this fancy equipment and it was better equipped than the Russian occupiers,” Artem says laughing.

Artem likes to paint dogs. The spectrum of personalities and roles that dogs have in our lives, is fascinating to him. They can have a variety of roles: companion, protector, friends, going for walks, but also how they work, such as Lord in the military for example. But Artem has no personal affection for dogs. He simply likes the theme and the variety of being able to represent them. Yet, he has other topics that interest him apart from dogs. There is the topic of Kyiv, a city he loves very much. But also sports activities such as wind surfing or skateboarding, or interiors such as living rooms. For Artem, art has nothing to do with politics. It is about personal representation and expression. He has no interest in politics, even though it’s omnipresent right now.

But even though the portrait of Lord is the only painting about war that Artem ever produced, he admits that his other works indirectly reference the war. For example, a rocket hit a building in Dnipro and the entire building collapsed. Images were splashed all over the news. Artem couldn’t take it anymore and created works that were not about war to escape. “The war does impact my work in that sense.”

Artem doesn’t really know why he can’t express the war directly in his works. He hesitates while answering. The first six months he tried to understand what was going on, sort of feeling it out. But it has been difficult and it’s a process. For Artem it was important not to lose himself in the chaos of current events. “It is a way to preserve your identity, and not to give in, or to collapse, to be able to stay with yourself.” War impacts his art, but it is represented negatively.

Some artists are capable of very fast adaptation and change their style and represent current events in their work. This does not work for Artem. He thought about it, but it didn’t come naturally to him. So he decided to stick to his current style, his practice, his habits so-to-speak.

For Artem art is like the animal kingdom; it’s a very wide spectrum and there’s a place for everybody: rhinoceros, lions etc. “Simply stay true to yourself, to your style and representation and don’t follow the trends.” That’s the most important for Artem. For him, art is a form of existence, and if he does not create, he does not exist. At the same time, however, art is a global connector. He does not see himself just as a Ukrainian artist. “You can speak to anyone in this world through art, through your self-expression and by staying true to your artistic calling.” Art is universal.

The Panvitalist

Before the war, Evgen had zero interest in portraying war in his work. “I wasn’t even watching the news.” Like Artem, Evgen was not able to make art at the beginning of the war – not because he had a creative block, but because he was volunteering and doing other things he believed to be more important.

According to Evgen, art is a reflection of your inner state, and that is how the topic of war became a subject for him. Art suddenly became an issue. Evgen is interested in drawing from nature, and when he went to the de-occupied territories, such as Izium and Kharkiv, he started drawing from “nature”, meaning he captured the things that he saw there, from real life. For Evgen it’s very important to capture the reality of war and show the rest of the world what is really happening in Ukraine. He calls his practice art journalism.

He draws small sketches with tanks on it, rockets, destroyed buildings such as schools and churches, portraits of soldiers who send him pictures of themselves. But Evgen also produces large paintings, and some of which are exhibited in the lounge area of the railway station in Kyiv. “It is where the diplomats arrive.”

Yet still today politics remain irrelevant to Evgen. He does not convey political messages in his art. Rather, he portrays people, real-life heroes; these are the subjects he tries to capture in his art. “We can only win if we focus on people and on humanity.” It is about the power of people and the Ukrainian heroes.

For Evgen, a hero is a person who makes sacrifices, who exhibits a certain degree of altruism. It can be anything, for example in a relationship with a partner. “You have to give up something that is important to you, even if it is not beneficent or uncomfortable for you.” Once, he had a conversation with a Ukrainian soldier, and they talked about the trend that nowadays you should do whatever fulfills you, whatever makes you happy. Then the soldier said: that doesn’t work for everyone. For soldiers in the military this is not possible. So sometimes you need to get over yourself and sacrifice and do what is right and what makes sense, and not just what you want to do and makes you happy. But soldiers aren’t the only people who sacrifice something. For Evgen, volunteers are also heroes and the children who have to endure the war.

A local woman in Irpin and Butcha, the epicenter of Russian atrocities and cruelties in this war, gave Evgen a reason and motivation for his art journalism. He was drawing a portrait of the statue of Ukrainian poet and writer Taras Shevchenko, who had a bullet in his head, and he was asking himself why he was drawing it when suddenly the woman showed up and told him that he has to capture this so that people around the world see it, because art transcends culture and different geographies and it can be more powerful than just a photo.

Evgen’s father is fighting in this war. They call each other on the phone, but they don’t speak about the war, because his father prefers to talk about other things. They discuss art and life in general. Evgen has his father’s full support, who says that everybody should be doing what they are good at.

Evgen’s art addresses existential questions: life, love, who we are, why are we here? “My art is reflecting what I am experiencing now.” Interestingly, before the war his art was dark, mysterious, with gloomy colors, but now he uses a lot of color and depicts positivity. “I learned to appreciate what I have.” So during the day he creates positivity, but at night bombs fall. For him it is a dualistic experience. A surreal life because while he creates he also listens to explosions, he laughs and feels life itself.

Evgen meditates every day, which is a major source of power for him. He also likes boxing, which for him is not about blindly hitting things or exercising but having control over your own body and being disciplined.

Like boxing and meditation, art is a practice with a powerful force that comes from the inside and speaks to the entire world. Artists need to listen to their heart. Art should be about the deep feeling that goes beyond your thoughts and brain power. Evgen is, as already mentioned, inspired by nature. It is another source of creativity for him. He walks into nature, around Kyiv, looks around, perceives the colors, the relationships, but most importantly, nature is but a word for reality. Nature is everywhere. Evgen’s abstract paintings are colorful, but they also contain geometric objects here and there, which can also be found in nature. In the painting they create volume and symbolic weight. The shapes create contrasts, and in this sense intensity. Evgen likes to create contrasts between elements and dynamic, expressive colors. That is how the colors and the elements come to life.

That is what Evgen sees in nature. For him, everything in nature is alive; panvitalism. Everything, also inanimate objects, have their own meaning and energy. “If you are at peace inside, everything else is also at harmony,” says Evgen, an artist producing in the midst of a war, the art journalist travelling to the mass murder sites and the frontline in Eastern Ukraine. Contrasts are very important for Evgen. Both in art and in life, because in art you have light and shadow, and the line delineates contrasts. But contrast is also what life is about: yin and yang, for example. The contrasts exist but they are in harmony.

For Evgen, art is very broad, and war is just a part of it. War is part of art’s universe. Not the other way around.

The Purist

As for Artem and Evgen, most of Aleksandr’s art was apolitical. Humanity, nature and love that were the topics that Aleksandr chose to work with. But, for Aleksandr it was the Maidan Revolution in 2014 that changed his view.

Today it is clear who the aggressor is, yet back then the narratives were rather confusing. Especially if you watched political discussions on TV. A million facts and messages, and endless propaganda. “So I created an artwork, straight politically, about Maidan, about what was happening.” It is a Maidan soldier in gypsum. Back then, Aleksandr was in his second year of university, and Maidan was only two kilometers away from his home. The soldier represents the inner conflict between Ukrainians, the fight between security, police force on the one hand and civilians on the other. Yet, while fighting, they looked more or less the same. Normal civilians had shields made of wood, similar to the shields of their opponents. The figure looks as if it could be both. “And that is what was happening. It was all the same. We are all people.”

The full-scale invasion in February 2022 was horrible for Aleksandr. But now it was very clear to everybody what was happening. The confusion from 2014 is gone now. In those days, Aleksandr suddenly understood that maybe art does not matter anymore. “Who cares about art now, when bombs are falling, shells are exploding, and I see every day in the news how Russian soldiers come closer and closer.” Aleksandr is in his hometown, 40km away from Kyiv, and would the Russians have marched a little more to the South, Aleksandr would have lived under occupation. At home, on February 23, Aleksandr decided to clean the next day. “And while I was cleaning the bombs were exploding somewhere, very close, but what can I do? Where can I run? It’s my home. The only thing I can do is continue. And I just felt how the whole thing was absurd. The bomb can just drop on me right now, but all I can do is complete what I am doing, and think that all this will pass sometime.” And so it came that Aleksandr drew himself cleaning. He posted the illustration online, saying that the invasion had begun, that the war is happening. At the same time, Aleksandr had a message for the Russians: he begged them to do something. “This is your government, these are your people coming here. Now, it sounds very stupid, but back then many Ukrainians believed that Russians might understand that this is completely wrong. But they were only applauding of what was happening in Ukraine. It was fun for them.” As so many other Ukrainians, Aleksandr had the naïve believe that Russians were thinking as democratically as they were. Because you need to believe in the capacity of civic society to rise up against an unjust and authoritarian regime.

The Maidan soldier was dedicated to the Ukrainians, because Aleksandr perceived them as being the same people, drawing himself was for the Russians, it was his expression of powerlessness. Only after a couple of days after the invasion, while understanding what was happening, Aleksandr realized that he is an artist, and that he has another purpose, another “frontline”, so-to-speak, of which he should be a part of. He realized that he could only produce artworks on war if he had something to say about it. It had to be personal and unique, and this personal uniqueness had to be searched for, and if he couldn’t find it, then he had to work on something else.

For Aleksandr, artists have to be truthful and pure, and that means that “an artist has to believe in what he creates, and what he says through his artworks.” There is a straight continuation between thoughts, imagination, perception, and the created object. Purity does not exclude politics. But even if political, the artist still needs to comprehend and be able to explain something. “For example, I made this Maidan soldier in such a fashion that I can explain what it is about, who it is, and why. I believe in this idea and I transform it into this sculpture. It is very important for an artist to just understand and believe in what you do.” Only then art is valuable for Aleksandr. Even if it doesn’t sell well. “It is important for an artist to tell what he really feels, and not just do something because it is popular. Many artists do this now, they do art about war, because they understand that it sells good. That is not truthful.”

Aleksandr uses digital media as well as sculpture to portray war. In the village, with no art supplies, no clay, no plaster to mold, he just needs to sit in front of the computer and get started. Aleksandr likes comics and sometimes he combines sculpture and comics in one art piece. Typically for comics, Aleksandr’s work features cartoonish characters, funny looking humans with speech bubbles. The artwork that Aleksandr created digitally is a pillar that blows up and on top is written in Russian: children. “That was my personal feeling about the destroyed theater in Mariupol. I collected many screenshots about doors and other surfaces written with the word children on it.” Aleksandr’s artwork is not about children in general, but the affection of this specific writing on the theater in Mariupol. For him, children are a very strong symbol in the war. They do not completely understand what is happening, he continues. Children have not seen the world as adults have and do not understand war. At the same time, bombing is something that deeply affected Aleksandr. “I saw it with my own eyes, not through news, and I prefer to create art about something that I personally see and feel in real life.” That is why many artworks by Aleksandr are about bombing or explosions.

Another digital artwork that Aleksandr created is a three-dimensional bust of Putin’s face. The bust is part of a series, which is based on Aleksandr’s emotional vision of people. Putin looks rather old and is covered in blood. “This is how I see Putin, sick, blind, in blood.” Again, it is a caricature, though more dramatic. People liked the work. The post has thousands of likes, but nevertheless, Aleksandr will not produce another Putin, even though it was successful.

For Aleksandr, it’s important to make art that isn’t about war. “For example for the warriors, when they come back from the war. We think about war, we dream about war. They must see that life is going on, and continuing. And that war is not everything.” Especially Aleksandr’s work on love and metamorphosis needs to be highlighted in this regard. Probably his most beautiful piece of art: a sculpture of two lovers hugging each other, fusing one into another, peacefully and unbreakable. Like a closed entity, so incredibly robust that nothing from the outside can do harm to the “amanti”, the lovers, as the sculpture is entitled. “But then again, it could be interpreted as being part of war, because love is one of many opposites of war,” Aleksandr says smiling. But that was not his intention, and the latter is of outmost importance. “We always have to study the background of the ones who create art. Just because we do not know it, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.” After all, this is where purity lies, conceptual reflection realized in matter.

The Optimist

Yulia studied and worked in Kyiv for 12 years, and when the war started in 2022, she went back to her hometown, Chernihiv. Before the war, her art was more about expressing herself, more soft, more feminine, but with the start of the war, it became much more difficult for her to create art in this way, so she changed her approach. Her art had to reflect current events more, and therefore it became much darker. It’s more about the war, it’s more about experience, and it’s not just done for self-expression anymore, but to generate donations through sales.

Once she got to Chernihiv, Yulia opened her art studio and offered art classes for adults. She teaches people who need to find a creative outlet for their emotions. Going back to her hometown was simple for her. In contrast to Kyiv, which was never really her favorite city, she identifies with Chernihiv and loves the atmosphere of the city center, a place where she belongs. So when the war started, it was not that she necessarily had to leave Kyiv, it was rather because she stopped procrastinating. The war was a gamechanger for her, in a positive sense.

Before the war Yulia had a different conceptual approach to art. She painted using her emotional and intuitive experience and family background. For example, when she was drawing wheat. For Yulia, wheat is the father’s art, actually her father’s art, because he has his own machines to process wheat in the field. Her parents live in the countryside of Chernihiv and it is something she always connected with; her father operating his machines during harvest season.

Similarly to Artem, Evgen and Aleksandr, Yulia thought that art and politics did not go together. But with the current events, art can explain politics and raise awareness of the political situation. “Sometimes when you hear the news anchor speaking, you can question whether it is factual or not factual, but artists do not raise these questions, because it is about the war experience of the artists.” Art for Yulia is always truthful, it is always a true representation of the artist’s emotions. And currently all artists are experiencing and living through the war, so obviously it is reflected in the art.

The painting entitled “Ukraine” is one of Yulia’s more sinister pieces. It is still in line with her style of work, but the black background gives it a tragic character. She painted “Ukraine” at the beginning of the invasion, when she was still in Kyiv and it was uncertain whether Chernihiv would fall or be taken. The painting is highly symbolic: at its center lies the mask of a woman, representing Ukraine. Her hair is made of wheat and a tear is running down her face. Other symbols are the dove and a building with broken windows from explosions. From the bottom rockets are flying onto Ukraine and close to them people are seeking shelter. Then there is the ornament of the embroidered shirts and the unbreakable roosters of Butcha. Finally, one of the woman’s arms is holding a rooster and the other hand is holding the world from the top. Sad and depressed, the crying woman is still able to grow wheat from her sorrow, and no matter how sad she is and how difficult it is, life is still preserved.

The depiction of Ukraine’s hope represents Yulia’s belief that war brought a necessary transformation, a catalyst for Ukraine to change. “Before the war people used to say: if you go abroad it is much better there, thereby neglecting whatever was local. What happens with the war now is that people realize their values and come together to unite, they support each other, and there is also a level of national pride that comes with it.” This also counts for Yulia. “I needed to find my identity and accept that I am proud to be Ukrainian, as banal as it sounds, and to find my language, because in Chernihiv many speak Russian, and I switched to Ukrainian. This all came with the war.” Yulia has no doubt that Ukraine will experience a revival, that it will restore itself. “It’s just going to take some time, but we all know what we are working for, and what the ultimate goal is.”

Wheat, sunflowers, Vyshyvanka, the traditional braided shirt that Ukrainians wear on Vyshyvanka day, all these symbols are important to Yulia and to Ukrainians in general. Yulia loves flowers. Protea, Freesia, red poppy, sunflowers, delphinium, all these flowers can be found in her paintings. For Yulia art is life. It is how she transmits her emotions, and how she reflects everything. Art is much more than just war, than politics. It is not propaganda, because it is not about gaining attention or polarizing. For Yulia art is the emotional representation of the present day. It’s about connecting people who have experienced the same thing or who can relate to her art.

The fact that art can also be therapeutic is what Yulia learned while teaching art classes. For her, there is no such thing as a clear-cut division between creative and non-creative people. Everybody is creative in their very own way. Through art many of her students can relax, get comfortable and express themselves. If it works, then her students are entirely in the moment, in an enjoyable group feeling, and they can get away from anything else. “It is definitely medicine for them.”

Yulia strongly believes that the current wave of identity and reflection will be preserved in the future, and she is optimistic and hopeful that Ukrainians will have enough memory and wisdom to realize that the circumstances with their neighbors are not going to change, and that it’s up to them to maintain this momentum to preserve their culture and to move forward.

She has future plans, obviously, but everything is moving a bit slower due to the war. She knows where she wants to be and what she needs to do, and thinks that this is also the case for other people in Ukraine.

Art Is Bigger Than War

Artem, Evgen, Aleksandr and Yulia all have in common that they experienced the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine. They also have in common that they are artists, even if they seek different forms of expression. But what Artem, Evgen, Aleksandr and Yulia also share is the belief that art is much more than just war or politics. The war in Ukraine needs to somehow find an expression in their artworks, yes, because it is the environment in which they live, but that does not mean that art can be reduced to politics or war. Art does not happen during war. If anything, war happens during art.

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Read the second part here.

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Olivier Del Fabbro ist ein luxemburgischer Philosoph und lehrt als Oberassistent an der ETH Zürich. Er forscht unter anderem zur Philosophie des Krieges und reiste für forum in die Ukraine.