The exhibition "Ukrainian Theatre Costume of the XX-XXI centuries. Identity, Context, Landscape" presents the works of Ukrainian artists who worked on the creation of theatre costumes at different times - Ivan Buriachok (1877-1936), Vadym Meller (1884-1962), Anatol Petrytskyi (1895-1964), Alla Horska (1929-1970), Myron Kyprian (1930-2019), Yevhen Lysyk (1930-1991), as well as works by practicing artists, who form the face of theatre and the art of theatrical costume in Ukraine today - Hanna Ipatieva, Danylia Kolot, Yulia Zaulichna, Olena Polishchuk, Lyudmyla Nagorna, Lyubov Dushyna, Natalia Rydvanetska, Inessa Kulchytska, Oleg Tatarinov, Bohdan Polishchuk. In addition, the exhibition features the works of talented students of several universities who are now starting their professional careers: Vasilina Bezherianu,Anna Mashkovska, Maria Chornoshkur, Kateryna Marchenko, and Kateryna Tyshchenko.

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The third exhibition, held at the Museum of Theatre, Music and Cinema of Ukraine, is a summary exhibition, featuring all the artists participating in the project. The museum exhibition features original theatre costumes by avant-garde artists Anatol Petrytskyi and Vadym Meller. Two women's dresses created by Anatolii Petrytskyi for Lesia Ukrainka's play The Fireplace Master, staged by Oleksandr Zaharov in 1921 at the Shevchenko State Drama Theatre, are particularly noteworthy. Lesya Ukrainka's drama The Stonemason is an interpretation of the world story of Don Juan. In the interpretation of the Ukrainian poetess, the traditional seducer of women becomes a victim of a woman who broke his will. Therefore, it is proposed to look at Donna Anna's costume, presented in the exhibition, from this perspective. The dress is made of sackcloth, on which a pattern was applied by hand (most likely by Petrytskyi himself) with glue paint. The outfit of a wealthy Spanish woman features variants of the swarga ornament instead of family coats of arms. The artist also depicts a dragon, a lion, and a griffin in a stylised manner. The latter seems to be borrowed from the Scythian animal style.

 

Vadym Meller's costume for The Sky Is Burning at the futuristic Art of Action Theatre is the only example of the cubist style in the history of Ukrainian costume that has survived to this day. The tunic is a transformed, reinterpreted Roman garment, and the conical headdress represents a helmet. Archival photographs from The Sky Is Burning show that Møller chose the seventeenth-century work The Oath of the Horatii by Jacques-Louis David as a reference for costumes and movements. This costume was designed for a group of performers, men and women, who portrayed the masses as a new subject of social and political reality. A complicated cut with asymmetrical details with loose, unfixed edges, hand-painted with red gradients - all these expressive means of transformation, combined with stage movements, created the illusion of fire. It should also be noted that there was no additional design of the space, the scenography was determined by the stage costumes and movements themselves.

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Vadym Meller's second costume is a worker's overalls and shirt from Les Kurbas's Gas at the Berezil Art Association. The premiere of the play "Gas" by expressionist Georg Kaiser took place on the stage of the First Theatre Workshop of the MOB in April 1923. The audience was enthralled by the innovation of the production. Les Kurbas gave a mechanical character to the actor's physicality; 30 performers moved on stage, imitating the coordinated movements of machines and people - the cogs of a misanthropic system. Stage and costume design by Vadym Meller: a three-dimensional metal installation in contrast to the traditional flat backdrop, manifestation costumes. Nadiia Shuvarska's choreography was embodied in the modern dance Daughter, performed by Valentyna Chistiakova and the Black Gentlemen, which lasted 96 seconds and took a hundred rehearsals! Anatolii Butskyi's industrial music, built around the sounds of factory machinery, was performed by a 48-piece orchestra.

 

The Mykola Sadovskyi Theatre (1907-1917) played an important role in the development of national scenography, where Vasyl Krychevskyi and Ivan Buryachok worked as artists. In the early twentieth century, it was the only Ukrainian theatre in Kyiv. The stationary nature of the theatre made it possible to complicate the scenery. For example, in Lesia Ukrainka's production of The Stone Master, a real fountain was on stage amidst the lavish decorations and costumes by Ivan Buriachok. The exhibition features Mykola Sadovskyi's memorial costume for the performance of Savva Chaly, where he played the lead role in 1906. In the photo, you can see the costume of Shmyhelskyi, another character from the play designed by Ivan Buriachok. It has a more stylised look. The wide, brightly coloured belt is accentuated, and this emphasises that the costume has a purely scenic function. The authentic photo of the Forester from The Magic Circle conveys the artist's skill in creating a mystical and fairy-tale image. In the play "Viy", Buryachok decided to add a Kyivan flavour. The stage featured a grotesque replica of the Samson Fountain, which is a symbol of Podil. The archetypal image of the Sotnyk became the inspiration for Petrytskyi's avant-garde development of the image for the 1925 production.

 

В експозиції представлені фото з негативів на склі з колекції музею, що були оцифровані для платформи Open Kurbas. А також архівні фото, які демонструють реалізовані костюми Вадима Меллера, Анатоля Петрицького та Мирона Кипріяна.

 

The project proposes to look at Ukrainian theatre costume, and with it, Ukrainian theatre and Ukrainian art in general, abandoning the optics of the Soviet or Russian context and the connotations that were aggressively imposed by imperial propaganda in previous years. It is important to realise the inseparability of Ukrainian artists in the pan-European cultural context for at least the last hundred years.

 

Another important message of our project is to refute artificial narratives about art and the figure of the artist outside of politics, state-building processes, and national identity.

 

The author and curator of the project is the co-founder of the Scenography Gallery, the Lviv Quadrennial of Scenography International Festival, scenographer, theatre costume designer and director Bohdan Polishchuk.

 

The curator of the Museum of Theatre, Music and Cinema Arts of Ukraine is Tetiana Rudenko, the chief curator of the museum's collections, a researcher of Ukrainian avant-garde theatre and the works of Vadym Meller and Anatol Petrytskyi.

 

The curator from the Polish side and the partner is an art historian, researcher of contemporary Polish scenography, Dr Barbara Zharinov.

 

The project is led by the head of the Scenography Gallery NGO, co-founder of the Lviv Quadrennial of Scenography International Festival, actor, director and teacher Oleh Oneshchak.

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