Knights of the Hungry Renaissance
2022 Peterson Literary Prize finalist
Лицарі голодного Ренесансу [Knights of the Hungry Renaissance]
Author: Dmytro Horbachov
Publisher: Дух і Літера [Spirit and Letter Publishing House]
Country: Ukraine
Language: Ukrainian
One of Ukraine’s leading art historians examines the phenomenon of the “Ukrainian avant-garde” art movement, which the Western art world discovered relatively late, thanks to the 1973 exhibit in London known as “Tatlin’s Dream.” The art of the Ukrainian avant-garde was exceptional since it was produced during a relatively short period of profound historic turmoil — World War I, followed by the Bolshevik Revolution, the collapse of the Russian Tsarist empire, the birth of the Ukrainian Republic, revolutionary war, the destruction of religious institutions, brief Ukrainianization, followed by a forced famine and Stalinist political repression. The book profiles the leading artistic figures of the Ukrainian avant-garde and notes its profound influence on the nonconformists of the 1960’s, including the Ukrainian cultural and political anti Soviet dissident movement of the sixties.