The monograph is the first thorough scientific study of the processes of formation of a higher art educational institution in Kharkiv, a feature of which was the alternating transition from the training of fine art artists to the study of specialists in the artistic and creative direction. Both of these lines were combined for the first time in the teaching system at the private drawing school of Mariia Raievska-Ivanova in Kharkiv in the second half of the 19th century, and today this model found its continuation and further development in the activities of the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts.
The author's attention is focused on the period from 1921 when the first art university in the city was created - the Kharkiv Art Technical College, later renamed the Kharkiv State Art Institute, and until 1962, that is, the beginning of the reformation of this institution into the Kharkiv Art and Industrial Institute.
The importance of the contribution of artists-pedagogues of avant-garde preferences in the KhSAI to the modernization of Ukrainian fine art in the 1920s - at the beginning of the 1930s and incredible losses among the teaching staff of the then art college in the capital city of Ukraine during the rampant Stalinist repressions in 1933–1937, which continued in another half of the 1940s until the onset of the "Khrushchev thaw", that is, the period with which this book ends.
The publication is intended for specialists and all those interested in the history of Ukrainian art.
