From "The Art Newspaper"
"An exhibition of Ukrainian Modernist works opening next week at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid has been organised in record time, and under trying conditions, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February.
In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine, 1900-1930s includes 51 works—around 75% of the show—that have been loaned from the National Art Museum of Ukraine (Namu) and the State Museum of Theater, Music and Cinema of Ukraine, both in Kyiv. To get to the show, the works were secretly packed into trucks and transported to Madrid on 15 November, which become one of the worst days of bombing in the Ukrainian capital since the beginning of the war. This is the largest-ever legal transfer of art from a war-torn country.
Incorporating artistic movements from Futurism to Constructivism, the show will chart the development of the Ukrainian Modernist period amid various political shifts, including the First World War and the creation of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Many of the artists in the show were killed during the repression of Stalinism, while their histories were obscured internationally for decades by auction houses and museums using the overarching and misleading label of ‘Russian’."
