National Art Museum of Ukraine

1899

Museum of Fine Arts in Ukraine, in Kyiv. Located on Mykhailo Hrushevskoho Street, Pechersk. One of the largest and oldest in the country. The museum building was designed by architect Vladislav Gorodetsky. The museum collection is based on donations from Bohdan Khanenko, Tereshchenko, Vikenty Khvoyka, Mykola Bilyashivsky and others. As of the beginning of the XXI century, the museum funds number about 40 thousand exhibits. He has a unique collection of works of Ukrainian painting, sculpture and icon painting from the XII-XX centuries.

Closed Museum

Status

Closed to visitors

Amount required

UAH 79,6 million

*The amount is not final and requires clarification, which is possible only after the examination

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Description of the institution

The museum was founded on August 1, 1899, and on December 30, 1904 it was opened in a building created in 1899 by architect Vladislav Gorodetsky, purposefully for the first city museum in Kiev. The funds of the National Art Museum of Ukraine today have about 40,000 exhibits, including masterpieces of Ukrainian and foreign painting, sculpture and graphics from the times of Kievan Rus to the present.

The museum has one of the best in Ukraine collection of iconography, ancient polychrome sculpture, Cossack portraits of the XVIII century, a collection of folk paintings "Kozak Mamai". Also presented are classical paintings of the XIX century, the Ukrainian avant-garde and art of the totalitarian era - socialist realism and underground, the latest trends in painting at the turn of XX-XXI centuries, a collection of graphics from ancient to modern times.

The most interesting in the collection

Among all the works of the permanent exhibition, there is one that always amazes the audience, because it is the only work presented not from the front, but from the back - "Red Guerrillas" of the 1920s by Hryhoriy Khyzhnyak. The canvas is painted on a part of the destroyed work, the name of which has not been preserved. The viewer sees an image of the legs of a male figure in military uniform, pierced by a wooden cross of a stretcher.

The address of the Red Partisans is in the third hall of the permanent exhibition "Modernism in Ukraine". Most of the exhibits at one time belonged to the "Special Fund", ie were subject to destruction as works of formalism or Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism. The figure of the person portrayed is unknown, but it is most likely that it was a full-length portrait of the military, made to order. Most likely, the depicted person was included in the list of enemies of the people, and for reasons of his own safety, the artist himself destroyed his work, cutting it in half. The part with the portrait was destroyed, and on the back of the neutral image of soldier's boots, the artist created the "Red Guerrillas" - a work that should please the requirements of the party.

Hryhoriy Khyzhnyak's work is presented as a symbol of fear, which was one of the main components of the Soviet repressive machine. Next to the work is a list of the names of 33 artists whose works were included in the "Special Fund" created in 1937-1939 in our museum. Specifically, this work, despite the "ideological correctness", was accounted for by a special fund in 1939.

Problem

In 2022, the museum building was to be restored, but due to the beginning of a full-scale invasion, this event had to be canceled. Your donation can greatly help in the restoration of the building - a monument of history, architecture and culture.

What will the funds be used for?

• Payment for heat supply — UAH 1 456 000 • Payment for water supply and sewage — UAH 1 450 000 • Payment for electricity supply services — UAH 1 456 400 • Payment for materials required for packaging and storage of museum objects — UAH 1 463 459 • Restoration of the building — UAH 73 841 341