UKRAINE: ART AND LITERATURE

The earliest arts in Ukraine include illuminated manuscripts, which are highly elaborate illustrations that accompany various kinds of texts (mostly religious). The most famous of these is the Peresopnytsia Gospel, written in Old Ukrainian during the mid-1500s. It seems that Ukrainian art is built on intricacy, from its famous pysanky (highly decorated Easter eggs) to the art of vytynanky (the folk art of elaborate paper cutting that’s also popular in Poland and Belarus).

Jewelry making in Ukraine has been around since the Old Stone Age. There are artifacts of bracelets made out of mammoth ivory, and there are also many bracelets, necklaces, arm cuffs, and hair ornamentation made from various metals, like gold, copper, bronze, and iron. Over the centuries, they added new techniques like mother-of-pearl inlays, forging, stamping, and enameling. Ukrainian jewelry makers eventually incorporated different folk patterns into their jewelry pendants and pieces and are worn by both men and women regardless of their social class.

Embroidery and weaving also plays an important part of their culture. Folk dress makes use of these elaborate, brightly colored embroidery patterns as well as different weaving techniques and lace-making. And the colors, motifs, and even types of stitches can vary depending on what region you’re from.

Ukrainian artists typically followed the artistic movements throughout Europe. Some of the famous painters from the Ukraine include Kazimir Malevich (part of the Ukrainian avant-garde), Ivan Aivazovsky (born in Crimea, known for his marine art), Maria Prymachenko (folk art painter, known as a representative of naïve art), Vladimir Borovikovsky (son of an icon painter, he was widely known as one of the best portrait painters around the turn of the 19th century), and Kseniya Simonova (does graphic design and illustration, became famous for her sand animation performance art on Ukraine’s Got Talent. I remember watching her years ago, you need to check it out.).

Kseniya Simonova's sand art

Literature in Ukraine is mainly written in Ukrainian, but it kind of had a rocky journey along the way, simply because so many people have ruled over the country over the centuries. The earliest pieces of literature were written in Latin or Old Church Slavonic. Literature in the Ukrainian language didn’t hit the scene until about the 1700s; folk epics called dumy helped make it more popular. They were essentially a way for Cossacks to retell historical events.

Iryna Vilde

What really set the stage for the Ukrainian language was a poem called Eneida by Ivan Kotliarevsky that was published in 1798. It was significant because it brought the modern Ukrainian language to the forefront, and many literary critics often consider him the “father of Ukrainian literature.” On the prose side of literature, the novel Marusya by Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko, published in 1834 is considered the first to be published in Ukrainian. One of the first influential female authors is Iryna Vilde, pseudonym for Daryna Dmytrivna Makohon. She was known for her short stories and novels about life in Western Ukraine as well as family life in bourgeois society, many of which were published during the early 20th century. One of her most famous works is Sisters Richynsky.

Throughout much of the time they were connected to Soviet Russia, there was a ban on using the Ukrainian language, whether written or spoken. There were quite a few Ukrainian authors who contributed to Russian literature during this time. (I mean, when the ideas are flowing, you just gotta write.) It wouldn’t be until they broke off from Russia that a whole new generation of writers would emerge from this censorship fog. Some of the authors of note include Serhiy Zhadan (novelist, poet, translator), Maria Matios (poet, novelist), Moysey Fishbein (translator, poet), Ihor Pavlyuk (writer, translator), Yuri Andrukhovych (essayist, poet, writer, translator), and Oksana Zabuzkko (novelist, poet, essayist).

Up next: music and dance