Nil Khasevych’s Works in the Context of Ukrainian Resistance Art of the First Half of the 20th Century

Author

Krailiuk Liubov

a Ph.D. in Art Studies, an associate professor at the Department of Visual and Applied Arts of Rivne State University for the Humanities (Rivne, Ukraine). ORCID ID: 0000-0001-6232-7533

Nil Khasevych’s Works in the Context of Ukrainian Resistance Art
of the First Half of the 20th Century

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to determine the role of the creative personality of Nil Khasevych in the process of forming the fine art component of the anti-imperial resistance ideology in its Ukrainian version. The methodology of the scientific study is based on the systemacy that combines the art critical approach and the culturological one. As a research method was chosen the diachronic comparative analysis of the tasks set themselves by artists, as well as the main ways of their handling. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that the creation of Nil Khasevych is for the first time considered in a broad context of organized attempts of planning and implementing visual works of anticolonial trend in the temporal range of the First World War to the mid-XXth century. Summary. The Ukrainian anti-imperial cultural resistance in the first half of the XXth century has been implemented in various forms, starting with documenting the events related to the liberation struggles, and completing with the works of purely ideological art, which became a reaction to an array of propaganda produced by public outreach machines of totalitarian states. Artists deliberately or intuitively worked on creating an institute of national remembrance as the basis of Ukrainian identity. N. Khasevych’s creative and organizational activities, given a string of historical circumstances, occupies a central place in this phenomenon. First, these his activities was the longest in time and concentrated immediately in the midst of the OUN–UPA underground on the territory of mainland Ukraine. Secondly, N. Khasevych’s professional, intellectual and organizational potentials, his ability to choose the most optimal artistic means also played a significant role. Thirdly, the artist’s personality, his unique biography and even disability became a basis of a very holistic artistic image, filled with symbolism, which felt as if to be tight in the chronological framework of the 1930s–1940s. A part of N. Khasevych’s ideological works by its content was aimed in a utopian way at realizing an independent Ukraine, that is, he was the first to transcend the limits of responding to the challenges of time and to offer one’s own concept of the future.

Keywords

ideological art, anti-colonial resistance, propaganda, Ukraine, Nil Khasevych.

References

1. BILAN, Ivan. The Creation of Yuriy Mahalevskyi in the Context of Ukrainian Art Process in the First Third of the XXth Century. [A Manuscript]. A Ph.D. in Art Studies thesis: specialty 17.00.05. Lviv, 2015, 170 pp. [in Ukranian].
2. DAREVYCH, Dariya. The Artistic Legacy of Nil Khasevych. In: Oleksandr ISHCHUK, Ihor MARCHUK. Nil Khasevych – His Life and Art (Introduction in English and Ukrainian by Dariya DAREVYCH). Toronto–Lviv: Litopys UPA, 2011, 432 pp., pp. 7–46 (Chronicle of UIA – Library, vol. 10) [in Ukrainian].
3. HORDYNSKYI, Sviatoslav (ed.). Leonid Perfetskyi: A Monograph. New-York–Toronto: Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U. S., 1990, 83 pp. [in Ukrainian].
4. MAYEVSKYI, Oleksandr. Posters and Caricatures in the System of Informational Space Development on the Occupied Territory of Ukraine (1941–1944). In: Valeriy SMOLIY, ed.-in-chief, Pages of Military History of Ukraine: Collected Scientific Articles. Kyiv: NAS of Ukraine’s Institute of History of Ukraine, 2016, iss. 18, pp. 110–119 [in Ukrainian].
5. MAYEVSKYI, Oleksandr. Political Posters and Caricatures as the Means of Ideological Struggle in Ukraine in 1939–1945. Kyiv: NAS of Ukraine’s Institute of History of Ukraine, 2018, 268 pp. [in Ukranian].
6. PEVNYI, Bohdan. A Sculptor who Came Out from the People. In: Bohdan PEVNYI. Masters of Our Art: Reflections on Artists and Art. New York: Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U. S.; Kyiv: Modernity Publishing Group, 2005, pp. 109–126 [in Ukrainian].
7. MUDRAK, Myroslava (prepared by). Beyond Borders: Modern Ukrainian Drawing for Book Illustration in 1914–1945: An Album. Kyiv: Critique, 2008, 176 pp. [in Ukrainian].
8. ROZHAK-LYTVYNENKO, Kseniya. Artistic grouping of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen: Artists, Traditions, Genre and Style Features of Their Works. [A Manuscript]. A Ph.D. in Art Studies thesis: specialty 17.00.05. Lviv, 2017, 379 pp. [in Ukranian].
9. YATSIV, Roman. Yuriy Mahalevskyi. In: Roman YATSIV. The XXth-Century Ukrainian Art: Ideas, Phenomena, Personalities: Collected Papers (edited by Stepan PAVLIUK). Lviv: Institute of Ethnology of NAS of Ukraine, 2006, pp. 159–175 [in Ukraine].