Sins of Youth. The Paris Period of Oleksandr Murashka

The new edition of the Small Series of Ukrainian Modernism presents the prominent Ukrainian artist Oleksandr Murashko (1875–1919), namely his Parisian period of life, which falls on the early 1900s.

The author — a well-known researcher Daria Dobriyan — found all possible addresses of the artist’s stay in Paris, the works he created, and analyzes how that early Parisian period influenced the work of the graduate of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts and how Murashko appears in the international artistic context of that time.

“And here, in Paris, Murashko was struck by the attitude to art that he saw in French artists; they were interested, first of all, in “painting”, the way of applying paint, color searches, the search for form, the richness, the boldness of the “brush stroke”, etc. And the content, the very “what” the artists of Paris were completely indifferent to: the content, the plot had to serve painting, was necessary insofar as it provided the best opportunity to reveal “pictorial” tasks” — this opinion was expressed by Mykola Burachek in his essay. Many other opinions and critical responses to the search and achievements of Oleksandr Murashka in Paris. The author examines them in detail and presents her conclusions.