Borys Kosarev "Modernist Kharkiv, 1915-1931"

The Ukrainian Museum

poster for Borys Kosarev "Modernist Kharkiv, 1915-1931"

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The first comprehensive exhibition of avant-garde artist Borys Kosarev will be presented in New York City at The Ukrainian Museum. Borys Kosarev: Modernist Kharkiv, 1915-1931 includes 82 works on paper by Kosarev, an important contributor to the Eastern European Modernist movement and a survivor of Stalin's intellectual purges in 1930s Ukraine.

Borys Kosarev (1897-1994), also known as Boris Kosariev, was a contemporary of prominent Kharkiv, Ukraine artists David Burliuk (1882-1967), Vladimir Tatlin (1885-1953), and Ilya Repin (1844-1930), as well as other celebrated Ukrainian artists such as Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935) and Alexander Archipenko (1887-1964). A master graphic artist, painter, designer, photographer, and book illustrator, Kosarev worked with luminaries such as theater director Les Kurbas (1887-1937), poet Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930), and cinema pioneer Alexander Dovzhenko (1894-1956). One of Kosarev's closest collaborators in the Kharkiv avant-garde was Volodymyr Bobrytskyi (1898-1986), who emigrated to New York and went on to become the recognized designer known as Bobri.

"Kosarev is barely known in his own country. This first ever exhibition brings to light Kosarev’s prodigious talent and exposes the fundamental relationship between the artist and the site of his creative stimulus, his beloved city, Kharkiv," said Maria Shust, director of The Ukrainian Museum. "Kosarev's extensive contribution to Ukrainian Modernism will finally be given its due when the collection is exhibited in Ukraine, where it will return in 2012."

Borys Kosarev’s name will forever be associated with the city of Kharkiv – the place of his birth, death, and a long life devoted to the visual arts. A native son of the fiercely independent Kharkiv territory, which produced some of Ukraine’s most creative cultural personalities, Kosarev epitomizes the spirit of the area and its regional diversity. The contents of the exhibition coincide with the period of Kharkiv’s status as Ukraine’s capital city (1919-1934) and the rise of Constructivism as an ideological aesthetic. It was also the period of Ukrainianization—a government policy that encouraged the revitalization of national culture, only to be quashed through a series of orchestrated purges of its proponents, the Ukrainian intelligentsia, beginning in the 1930s. While it flourished, Ukrainianization brought with it a renaissance of art and culture, serving as an unprecedented gateway into global Modernism through the aesthetic of Constructivism.

Sheltered from excessive official scrutiny by working in theater design and as a teacher until his death in 1994, Kosarev survived the Stalin purges and later repressions by intentionally "flying under the radar." Sadly, his own reticence, coupled with the pressures exerted by the political landscape of the times, left Kosarev virtually unknown as a contributor to the Modernist movement. Not unlike Anatol Petrytsky (1895-1964), whose works were called a "serendipitous discovery" by the New York Times (Glueck, Grace. “Ukrainian Modernists, All Alone, Here at Last.” The New York Times, November 4, 2006, B7), Kosarev and his art are yet to be revealed and considered among the important Modernists of the early 20th century. Borys Kosarev: Modernist Kharkiv, 1915-1931 is augmented with several works by his colleagues Vasyl Yermilov (1894-1968) and Maria Syniakova (1890-1984). The exhibition, comprising 88 objects in total, is curated by Myroslava M. Mudrak, Professor of Art History, The Ohio State University.

Media

Schedule

from December 05, 2011 to May 02, 2012

Artist(s)

Borys Kosarev

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