BOOK PRESENTATION: “SIXTY TOTALITARIAN YEARS: THE VISUAL ARTS OF UKRAINE” AT KSADA
The Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts invites lecturers, researchers, students, PhD students, artists, art historians, cultural studies scholars, and everyone interested in the history of Ukrainian art to attend a presentation of Oleksii Rohotchenko’s popular academic book “Sixty Totalitarian Years: The Visual Arts of Ukraine”.
The event will be held in a hybrid format — in person at KSADA and online via Zoom. Details regarding the date, time, venue, and online access link will be announced shortly.
The book is dedicated to the study of Ukrainian visual arts and architecture of the 1920s-1980s — a complex period in Ukrainian history marked by totalitarian practices, the Holodomor, political repressions, World War II, ideological control over culture, the dominance of Socialist Realism, the “Khrushchev Thaw”, and the rise of non-conformism.
The author examines the artistic process through the socio-political and socio-psychological circumstances in which Ukrainian artists worked. Particular attention is paid to the specific nature of Soviet artistic totalitarianism in Ukraine, forms of resistance to imposed ideological models, and the role of Ukrainian identity as a means of preserving cultural distinctiveness.
The publication introduces previously unknown documents, artworks, and other materials into academic discourse. The author offers his own perspective on the development of Ukrainian culture during this period, which may differ from the views of other researchers.
Oleksii Rohotchenko is a Ukrainian art historian, expert and art critic, member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine (1979), Professor (since 07.09.2021), PhD in Art History (2017); Honoured Artist of Ukraine (2005); Head of the Criticism and Art History Section of the Kyiv Organisation of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine (KONUAU), editor-in-chief of the MARI collection “The BRIDGE (AHMT): Art, History, Modernity, Theory” (since 2003); curator of national and international projects, co-curator of the Ukrainian pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011), Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine (2021).
We warmly invite you to join us for the presentation and take part in the open discussion that will follow!
