Professional Decorative Arts of Ukraine in the 20th Century: Historical and Theoretical Aspects of Development

Author

Chegusova Zoya

a Ph.D. in Art Studies, a senior research fellow, a Scientific Secretary at the Fine and Decorative Arts Department of M. Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine).

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9016-6615

Professional Decorative Arts of Ukraine in the 20th Century:

Historical and Theoretical Aspects of Development

Abstract

The evolution of Ukrainian professional decorative art in the historical and artistic process of the 20^th century is considered in the submitted article. An attempt is made to create a holistic picture of the development of professional decorative art in Ukraine in the complexity and multilayeredness of this large-scale layer of the national culture, which testifies to significant artistic achievements at the level of world examples.

An analysis of the artistic and stylistic changes those professional decorative art has undergone as a result of radical social movements during the dramatic history of Ukraine in the 20^th century has been conducted. The progress of professional decorative art of the indicated period has been recreated panoramically: from the birth of Ukrainian modernism in the pre-revolutionary period as a bright “national style” based on the principles of folk art; the surge of avant-garde art in the 1910s–1920s; the dominance of naturist painting in the 1930s–1950s against the background of the creation of an “optimistic myth” about the Soviet life by totalitarian art to the creative growth of professional artists in various branches of the Ukrainian art industry in the 1960s. The change in expressive means in the other half at the 20^th century has been manifested in the return of the flatness of the image and the locality of the color palette, natural for decorative art, and the widespread use of techniques for generalizing and stylizing folk art forms. During the 1960s–1970s the author’s ceramics has been developed under the influence of the works of folk masters, the author’s glass absorbs all traditions of Ukrainian glassmaking, the tapestry reveals a powerful influence of folk carpet weaving, as do all other areas of decorative art, which has received the general name “folklorism”.

This occurs in parallel with the process of the emergence of original handmade artistic ceramics, glass, and textiles and the gradual mastery of world artistic experience, along with the search by artists-applicants for their own artistic criteria in decorative creativity, inspired by an associatively complex way of figurative-plastic thinking.

At the end of 1980–1990s the multifaceted decorative art of Ukraine has been developed in the line with the pan-European artistic process on the background of a respectful attitude towards the historical traditions of the national imaging.

Keywords

professional decorative art of Ukraine, 20^th century, search for a national style, artistic ceramics, glassmaking, carpet weaving, tapestry, batik, figurative and plastic transformations.

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