Zelenskiy says ‘culture must win’ as experts warn of art theft

Ukraine’s president said on Monday that “culture must win” in the country’s ongoing war, and art critics warned of the extent of Russia’s looting and destruction of Ukraine’s cultural heritage.

Russia’s February 24 attack on Ukraine was an attack “against freedom” and war cannot be waged by “arms of arms” alone because culture also plays an “important role,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video sent to the inauguration. in Madrid, at the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, the exhibition “In front of the hurricane. Avant-garde in Ukraine, 1900-1930s”.

The exposition contains about 70 works by Ukrainian artists, of which 51 were taken from the museums of Ukraine, when the country’s cities were subjected to rocket bombardments.

“I think this exhibition shows what Russia is trying to destroy with war. I think this exhibition shows how connected Ukraine is with Europe,” Zelensky said.

The President of Ukraine, who in the video was wearing a “T-shirt” with the inscription in English “I am Ukrainian”, emphasized that the works that make up the exhibition were created in the first three decades of the 20th century, coinciding with “terrible” moments and “very heavy” from the history of Ukraine and all of Europe, when “tyranny” tried to conquer the continent, “just like now.”

“As then, culture must win,” Zelensky said.

At the opening of the exhibition, one of the curators Konstantin Akinsha warned about the destruction of cultural heritage and the looting of works of art by Russia in the territories that it has attacked and occupied in Ukraine since February 24.

“There is nothing comparable since the Second World War,” he said, stating that in order to obtain correct and specific data, the authorities would still need to conduct a survey, but that there was a “violation of international laws” and that “international courts” would have to investigate and pursue these crimes.

According to the latest data from UNESCO (United Nations Educational and Cultural Agency), as of November 21, there are 218 objects in Ukraine with registered war damage: 95 religious sites, 17 museums, 78 buildings of historical interest and / or art, 18 monuments and 10 libraries.

“To date, no UNESCO World Heritage Site has been harmed,” the UN agency said.

The exhibition, which opened this Monday in Madrid, includes works that have never before been shown to an international audience outside of Ukraine, as well as works by internationally renowned names who for decades have been known as Russian, not Ukrainian, artists.

One case is a painting by Vladimir Burliuk, painted between 1910 and 1911, from the Thyssen-Bornemiza collection, which was exhibited for many years under the title “Russian Peasant”, until a member of the Spanish museum of Ukrainian origin called attention to the fact that the author was from Ukraine and the title of the work was actually “Ukrainian Peasant”.

Ukrainian Ambassador to Spain Serhiy Pogoreltsev, as well as representatives of the National Museum and Art of Ukraine in Kyiv, from where the works for this exhibition were taken, stressed today how Russia “always tried to steal ‘Ukrainian identity’ by stealing the names of artists of Ukrainian culture”, but also by hiding and banning the exhibition of certain works of art or sending dozens of writers, theater directors and other artists to execution.

“In a sense, it was a cultural genocide,” another “act of genocide” by Russia against Ukraine, defended Ambassador Sergei Pogoreltsev.

For the Ukrainian authorities, the Avangard art movement in Ukraine is “independent” and “worthy to be inscribed in the history of art at the beginning of the 20th century.”

Exhibition “In front of the hurricane. Avant-garde in Ukraine, 1900-1930” will be on display at the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid until the end of April 2023, and then at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany, where it will remain until September next year.

The commissars and the Ukrainian authorities would like it to go to other cities in Europe later.

“We want them to know more about Ukraine, and not only through the war,” another curator of the exhibition, Katya Denisova, defended.

Commissioner Konstantin Akinsha told the Portuguese press that he would like this appeal to reach Portugal, where there is a large Ukrainian community.

According to information disclosed by the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, this exhibition is “the most comprehensive study of Ukrainian avant-garde art to date”, which aims to “celebrate the dynamism and diversity” of Ukrainian art and, at the same time, “protect the country’s heritage during the current unbearable occupation of the territory by Russia”.

According to the same information, the works exported from Ukraine for the exhibition were transported under “exceptional conditions, becoming the largest transport of legal art to date exported from the war-torn country.”

The 51 works were trucked thousands of miles to Poland, coinciding with some of the heaviest bombardments of Ukrainian cities since the start of the war, including Kyiv.

They were kept for another ten hours at the border with Poland, which was closed as a result of a rocket falling on Polish territory.

The Ambassador of Ukraine in Madrid thanked the Polish authorities this Monday for allowing the transport of works of art in this context.