Les kurbas, berezil, and the birth of modern ukrainian theater

Les Kurbas (1887-1937) was not only the most important organizer and director of the Ukrainian avant-garde theater, but also one of the most outstanding European theater directors in the first half of the 20th century. Hailed by Vsevolod Meyerhold as "the greatest living Soviet theater director" (and thus, elevated above such giants of Russian and European theater as Konstantin Stanislavsky, Alexandr Tairov, and Meyerhold himself), Kurbas worked to create a new tradition of an intellectual and philosophical theater. His Molodyi Teatr productions revolutionized Ukrainian theater (that was crippled for decades by tsarist draconian decrees and circulars), elevating it in style, esthetics, and repertoire to the level of modern European theater. It was in the 1920s, at his Berezil theater, that Kurbas's creative genius became most evident. At its height Berezil employed nearly four hundred people and ran six actors' studios, a directors' lab, a design studio, and a theater museum. However, Kurbas was given only several years to implement his cultural revolution. Accussed by the Soviet officials of nationalism and counterrevolutionary activities, Kurbas was arrested and executed during the Stalinist terror. All of his productions were banned from the Soviet repertoire and most of his archival materials, including all of his films, were destroyed. No serious study of his artistic legacy was allowed to be published in the USSR until the late 1980s.

Kurbas, Les (Oleksander), b 25 February 1887 in Sambir, Galicia, d 3 November 1937 in Sandarmokh, Karelia region, RFSSR. Outstanding organizer and director of Ukrainian avant-garde theater, filmmaker, actor, and teacher; son of the Galician actor Stepan Yanovych (stage name: Kurbas) and actress Vanda Yanovycheva. In 1907–8 he studied philosophy at the University of Vienna and drama with the famous Viennese actor Josef Kainz. After graduating from Lviv University in 1910, he worked as an actor in the troupes of the Hutsul Theater (1911–12) and Lviv’s Ukrainska Besida theater (1912–14), founded and directed the Ternopilski Teatralni Vechory theater in Ternopil (1915–16), and worked at Sadovsky's Theater in Kyiv (1916–17).

After the February Revolution of 1917 Kurbas reorganized an actors' studio he had founded in 1916 into the Molodyi Teatr theater (1917–19) in Kyiv and became the secretary of the journal Teatral’ni visty. In Molodyi Teatr’s productions, which included the first performance in Ukrainian of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex (1918), Kurbas revolutionized Ukrainian theater, elevating it in style, esthetics, and repertoire from the provincial to the level of modern European theater. Influenced by Henri Bergson’s philosophy and the theatrical theories and experiments of Max Reinhardt, Georg Fuchs, and Edward Gordon Craig, Kurbas used Molodyi Teatr’s experimental productions to develop his own style of intellectual theater to replace the traditional Ukrainian ethnographic repertoire and traditional, realist psychological theater in general.

Kurbas’s idea of a new, philosophical theater (whose ultimate aim was to return to theater’s ritualistic roots and once again become a religious act) demanded a new type of actor. Rather than reliving the character’s emotions or identifying with him or her, Kurbas’s actor was supposed to objectify the character through the complete control of his or her body and voice and by means of several key techniques. The most important technique, transformation (peretvorennia), represented a theatrical symbol designed to reveal the spiritual and hidden elements by way of concrete images. Another crucial element of Kurbas’s approach was musical rhythm, which had to permeate and unify the entire production. To implement his principles, Kurbas placed much emphasis on his actors' intellectual and technical training, using in the latter the systems of gestures developed by François Delsarte and Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, as well as on architectural design, using the talents of Anatol Petrytsky and Mykhailo Boichuk.

In 1919 the Bolshevik authorities forced Molodyi Teatr to merge with the State Drama Theater, and Kurbas became the codirector, with Oleksander Zaharov, of the new Shevchenko First Theater of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. There, to great acclaim, he staged an interpretation of Taras Shevchenko's epic poem Haidamaky (The Haidamakas); this monumental production, with music by Reinhold Glière, became the standard by which all Ukrainian productions were measured in the 1920s. By 1920 the situation in Kyiv, devastated by continuous warfare, had become unbearable for actors, and Kurbas formed the Kyidramte touring theater troupe, which toured Bila Tserkva, Uman, and Kharkiv. Kyidramte’s repertoire included the first Ukrainian-language production of a play by William Shakespeare—Macbeth, which premiered in Bila Tserkva in August 1920. At this stage in his career, Kurbas gave up acting to concentrate solely on teaching and directing. Convinced that theater could be used as a powerful political instrument, in 1922 he renounced the estheticism of his earlier period and founded the Berezil artistic association in Kyiv as a left-leaning theater dedicated to the cause of the proletarian revolution.

It was at Berezil in Kyiv (1922–6) and later Kharkiv (1926–33) that Kurbas's creative genius became most evident and transformed Berezil into the focal theater in Ukraine . At its height Berezil employed nearly four hundred actors and staff members and ran six actors' studios, a directors' lab, a design studio, a theater museum, and ten specialized committees. There Kurbas perfected his rigorous system for the intellectual and technical training of actors. It focused on ‘mime-dramas’, which shared many features of early avant-garde abstract dance and had to be fully mastered before actors were permitted to study the use of language. The main stylistic principle of Berezil's productions was the synthesis of speech, movement, gestures (which were supposed to be objectivized and remain separate from the actor's frame of mind and personal experiences), music, light, and decorative art into one rhythm or simple, dramatic language. Utilizing various elements of expressionism, constructivism, and other avant-garde styles, Kurbas’s innovative productions—eg, of Georg Kaiser’s Gas (1923), Upton Sinclair’s Jimmie Higgins (1923) (in which film was used for the first time on a Ukrainian stage), Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1924), and Fernand Crommelynck's Tripes d'or (1926) —challenged the traditional principles of realist psychological theater and often anticipated the later experiments of such directors as Bertolt Brecht and Antonin Artaud. Of particular importance for the development of Ukrainian drama and theater was Kurbas’s collaboration with the most important Ukrainian playwright of the 1920s, Mykola Kulish, three of whose plays became part of Berezil’s repertoire.

In 1925 a lively public dispute about Kurbas and Berezil erupted. Soviet critics and Party officials denounced Berezil’s complex avant-garde style, inaccessibility to the masses, intellectual sophistication, and ‘antidemocratic stance.’ Nonetheless, Berezil was still recognized as Ukraine’s best theater, and in 1926 it moved to the then capital of Soviet Ukraine, Kharkiv. There Berezil became a focal point of a ‘theater dispute’ (part of the broader Soviet Ukrainian Literary Discussion), whose most important public forums in 1927 and 1929 represented confrontations between leading Soviet Ukrainian cultural figures (including Kurbas, Kulish, and Mykola Khvylovy) and theater traditionalists loyal to the Party (eg, Hnat Yura) as well as Soviet critics and officials (eg, Ivan Kulyk). Under mounting Party criticism, Berezil was forced to exclude from its repertoire most of Kulish’s plays and to stage second-rate dramas by Ivan Mykytenko, a Party favorite whose works adhered to the principles of socialist realism. Kurbas defiantly responded to this infringement on artistic freedom by completely rewriting Mykytenko’s Dyktatura (Dictatorship) and turning it into a musical that became one of his most notable directorial achievements.

As the Party’s control over all spheres of cultural and political life in Ukraine tightened in the 1930s, Kurbas’s ideas and his dynamic, innovative, and often controversial productions were condemned as nationalist, rationalist, formalist, and counterrevolutionary. In October 1933 he was dismissed as the director of Berezil, and all of his productions were banned from the Soviet Ukrainian repertoire. To avoid further persecution, he moved to Moscow to join the GOSET (the State Jewish Theater) and work there on a production of King Lear starring Solomon Michoels. But soon after, in December 1933, he was arrested by the NKVD and imprisoned on the Solovets Islands in the Soviet Arctic. There he became a victim of the mass executions of prisoners marking the twentieth anniversary of the October Revolution of 1917. Most of his archival materials, including all of his films, were destroyed.

Kurbas left his mark in the history of Ukrainian theater as an innovative organizer and teacher and daring experimental director. At Molodyi Teatr he introduced a modern European repertoire and style of acting. At Berezil he broke down the old forms of Ukrainian theater and, after a long period of searching and enthusiastic experimentation with German expressionist theater and the theories of constructivism, succeeded, in his productions of Kulish's plays, in creating a unique, Ukrainian expressionist theater. With his production of Kaiser's Gas in 1923, Kurbas broke completely with traditional Ukrainian realist, ethnographic theater to present spectacles that forced the audience to become active participants rather than passive observers. He combined his intellectualism and philosophical interpretation of plays with a brilliant synthesis of rhythm, movement, and avant-garde theatrical and visual devices, including the use of film, and managed to gather together the best actors, directors, set designers (eg, Vadym Meller), and playwrights in Ukraine. At the Berezil studios and Kyiv (1922–6) and Kharkiv (1926–33) music and drama institutes (see Lysenko Music and Drama Institute and Kharkiv Theater Institute), he trained an entire generation of Ukrainian actors and directors, including Danylo Antonovych, Borys Balaban, Yevhen Bondarenko, Amvrosii Buchma, Valentyna Chystiakova (Kurbas’s wife), Olimpiia Dobrovolska, Leontii Dubovyk, Sofiia Fedortseva, Liubov Hakkebush, Yosyp Hirniak, Domian Kozachkivsky, Marian Krushelnytsky, Lidiia Krynytska, Ivan Marianenko, Dmytro Miliutenko, Fedir Radchuk, Polina Samiilenko, Iryna Steshenko, Oleksander Serdiuk, Volodymyr Skliarenko, Borys Tiahno, Nadiia Tytarenko, Nataliia Uzhvii, and Vasyl Vasylko.

Berezil (March). A theater established in 1922 in Kyiv by the Berezil artistic association as an experimental studio under the artistic direction of Les Kurbas. Achieving recognition as Soviet Ukraine’s national theater, it was located in Kyiv until 1926 and then moved to the then capital, Kharkiv. At its height Berezil included six actors' studios (three in Kyiv, one each in Bila Tserkva, Boryspil, and Odesa), close to 400 actors and staff members, a directors' lab, a design studio, a theater museum, and ten committees, including a ‘psycho-technical’ committee that used applied psychology to develop new teaching methods for actors and directors. Berezil also published a journal, Barykady teatru (Theatrical Barricades).

Having renounced the aestheticism of his Molodyi Teatr period, Kurbas saw Berezil as a left-leaning theater dedicated to the cause of proletarian revolution. But he never embraced a single ideology or program; instead, he insisted that Berezil was ‘not dogma, but movement,’ a ceaseless revolutionary search for new forms of artistic expression. Kurbas’s first Berezil productions, Zhovten’ (October, 1922) and Rur (Ruhr, 1923), were designed as agitprop performances and often performed especially for Red Army troops. Nonetheless, they were considerable artistic achievements and contained important formal experiments, especially in their choreography of mass scenes.

Kurbas introduced a sophisticated technical and intellectual training program for Berezil’s actors that emphasized rhythm and focused on ‘mime-dramas’ exhibiting many features of early avant-garde abstract dance. Only after they had mastered the art of ‘mime-drama’ and the use of props were actors permitted to study the use of language. The overarching goal of Berezil's productions was the synthesis of speech, movement, gesture, music, light, and decorative art into one rhythm or simple, dramatic language, based on the belief that theater shapes rather than reflects life. According to Kurbas, this process, which required a ‘new actor’ and directorial approach, was also aimed at creating a new type of theatrical audience and society in general—‘a new, not passive, person.’

Despite its essential differences with expressionist theater, Berezil (whose motto was ‘a committed, reflective theater’) used formal expressionist devices in its subsequent productions of plays by Georg Kaiser, Ernst Toller, and Upton Sinclair. Kurbas’s staging of Kaiser’s Gas (1923) in Ukrainian was Berezil’s first great success, and it was hailed as ushering in ‘a new era in theater.’ Kurbas and Berezil’s even more successful first adaptation of Sinclair’s Jimmy Higgins (1923) in Ukrainian used film to create a thoroughly innovative theatrical effect.

The next period in Berezil’s development was associated with its experimental productions of classic dramas in Ukrainian translation, in particular a radically original and ‘scandalous’ staging of William Shakespeare's Macbeth (1924); Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller's Die Verschwörung des Fiesco zu Genua; Victor Hugo's Le Roi s'amuse; Prosper Mérimée's La Jacquerie; Fernand Crommelynck's Tripes d'or; and Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado. The theater also staged experimental productions of Ukrainian plays such as Ivan Karpenko-Kary's Khaziaïn (The Master) and Sava Chalyi; Mykhailo Starytsky's Za dvoma zaitsiamy (After Two Hares); Volodymyr M. Yaroshenko's Shpana (Riff-raff); Maik Yohansen, Mykola Khvylovy, and Ostap Vyshnia's Allo na khvyli 477 (Hello on Frequency 477); Kost Burevii's Chotyry chemberleny (Four Chamberlains); and Stepan Bondarchuk and Kurbas's Proloh (Prologue).

Among Berezil’s major achievements were its productions of plays by Kurbas’s close collaborator and the most important Ukrainian dramatist of the 1920s and 1930s, Mykola Kulish. Because of those plays’ political nonconformism, however, the Soviet authorities granted permission to stage only a few of them— Narodnii Malakhii (The People's Malakhii, 1928), which was banned after several performances, Myna Mazailo (1929), and the soon banned Maklena Grasa (1933), whose dress rehearsal was monitored by armed police.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Kurbas and Berezil became the targets of ever-increasing condemnation by official Soviet critics and Party functionaries. Berezil became a focal point of a ‘theater dispute’ (part of the broader Literary Discussion) in which Kurbas was initially denounced for Berezil’s ‘inaccessability to the masses’ and his own ‘antidemocratic stand’ and, eventually, for being a ‘bourgeois nationalist’ and ‘counterrevolutionary.’ At the end of 1933, after Kurbas’s dismissal as Berezil’s artistic director and his subsequent arrest by the NKVD, Berezil was purged. The theater’s actors who were not arrested and imprisoned during the Stalinist Terror joined the reformed Kharkiv Ukrainian Drama Theater. There, under the directorship of Marian Krushelnytsky, they performed in plays that conformed to the tenets of officially sanctioned socialist realism.

Many notable Ukrainian actors belonged to Berezil—Marian Krushelnytsky, Yosyp Hirniak, Nataliia Uzhvii, Amvrosii Buchma, Ivan Marianenko, Valentyna Chystiakova, Iryna Steshenko, Nadiia Tytarenko, Stepan Shahaida, Oleksander Serdiuk, Danylo Antonovych, Hanna Babiivna, Olimpiia Dobrovolska, and Hnat Ihnatovych—and an entire generation of younger actors and directors were trained there. Besides Kurbas, Yanuarii Bortnyk, Favst Lopatynsky, Borys Tiahno, Volodymyr Skliarenko, Borys Balaban, directed Berezil’s plays. Berezil's primary stage designer was the prominent painter Vadym Meller.

Molodyi Teatr (Young Theater). A theatre troupe in Kyiv headed by Les Kurbas from 1917 to 1919. The core group of actors consisted of graduates of the Lysenko Music and Drama School and included Vasyl Vasylko, Yona Shevchenko, Marko Tereshchenko, Volodymyr Kalyn, Stepan Bondarchuk, Polina Samiilenko, Sofiia Manuilovych, Antonina Smereka, Oleksii Vatulia, Polina Niatko, and Olimpiia Dobrovolska. Most of the productions were directed by Kurbas, although Hnat Yura, V. Vasilev, and Semen Semdor also directed shows. Anatol Petrytsky was the main stage designer, but Mykhailo Boichuk was invited to create sets for several important productions. Kurbas's articles, such as the ‘Manifesto’ (in Robitnycha hazeta, 1917) and ‘Molodyi Teatr’ (Young Theatre, 1917), called for a new Ukrainian theatre and outlined the artistic goals of the group. Molodyi Teatr rejected the Ukrainian ethnographic repertoire and presented modern Ukrainian plays and world classics. Kurbas strived to create an intellectual and philosophical theater whose ultimate aim was to return to its ritualistic roots and to become once again some form of a religious act. His search for new forms resulted in imaginative uses of rhythm, gesture, music, and design in his productions. The first season included Kurbas's productions of the realist Chorna pantera i bilyi vedmid’ (Black Panther and White Bear) by Volodymyr Vynnychenko, the naturalistic Jugend by M. Halbe, and Doktor Kerzhentsev, based on L. Andreev's Mysl’ (Thought), directed by Yura. These were followed by a stylized presentation of three symbolic études by Oleksander Oles, two of which were directed by Kurbas and one by Yura. Molodyi Teatr concluded its first season with a production of J. Żuławski's impressionistic verse play Jola.

The second season (1918–19) opened with Kurbas's production of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, the first Ukrainian production of a classical Greek play. Kurbas's subsequent productions included Lesia Ukrainka's U Pushchi (In the Wilderness); F. Grillparzer's Weh dem, der lügt! in the commedia dell'arte style; a stylized Vertep, which used the conventions of the puppet theater; expressionistic stagings of Taras Shevchenko's dramatic poems ‘Ivan Hus’ and ‘Velykyi l'okh’ (The Great Vault); and performances of several lyrical poems as choral movement pieces with music, which Kurbas would later see as his first attempt to create ‘transformed gestures,’ the central concern of his later work. During the season the other directors presented literal stagings of such plays as G. Shaw's Candida (directed by Yura), G. Hauptmann's Die versunkene Glocke (by Yura) Volodymyr Vynnychenko's Hrikh (Sin, by Yura), Moliere's Tartuffe (by Vasilev), and H. Ibsen's En folkefiende (by Semdor).

In the spring of 1919, as the internal artistic conflicts came to a head, Molodyi Teatr was nationalized by the Bolshevik government and forced to merge with the State Drama Theater to form the Shevchenko First Theater of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. Although it lasted only two seasons, Molodyi Teatr changed the direction of Ukrainian theatre, and from its ranks came the artistic directors of the major theaters of the 1920s, including Les Kurbas, Hnat Yura, Marko Tereshchenko, and Vasyl Vasylko.

Krushelnytsky, Marian [Krušel’nyc’kyj, Mar'jan], b 18 April 1897 in Pyliava, Buchach county, Galicia, d 5 April 1963 in Kyiv. Actor and play director of Les Kurbas's school; educator. Making his stage debut in 1915 in the Ternopilski Teatralni Vechory theater, he subsequently acted in the Ukrainian Theater in Ternopil (1918, 1920–1), the New Lviv Theater (1919), the Franko Ukrainian Drama Theater in Vinnytsia (1920), and the Ukrainska Besida Theater in Lviv (1922–4). Then he was one of the leading actors of the Berezil theater, and after L. Kurbas's arrest and the dissolution of Berezil, Krushelnytsky was appointed in 1934 artistic director and chief play director of the Kharkiv Ukrainian Drama Theater. He modified the theater's profile, particularly its repertoire, according to the demands of socialist realism: preference was given to Oleksander Korniichuk's and Liubomyr Dmyterko's plays and Russian classics. Joining the Kyiv Ukrainian Drama Theater in 1952, he eventually became its chief stage director (1954–63). After the war, he also taught acting at the Kharkiv Theater Institute (1946–52) and the Kyiv Institute of Theater Arts (1952–63).

As an actor Krushelnytsky distinguished himself under Les Kurbas's direction in the Berezil theater. He played a wide range of roles, including Honoré d'Apremout in Prosper Mérimé's La Jacquerie, Barbulesque in F. Crommelynck's Tripes d'Or, and Maloshtan in Ivan Mykytenko's Dyktatura (Dictatorship). He was particularly impressive in Mykola Kulish's plays: as Malakhii in Narodnyi Malakhii (The People's Malakhii), Uncle Taras in Myna Mazailo, and Padura in Maklena Grasa. In the post-Berezil period his better roles were comedic ones such as Kuksa in Marko Kropyvnytsky's Poshylys’ u durni (They Made Fools of Themselves) and Ivan Nepokryty in his Dai sertsiu voliu zavede v nevoliu (Give the Heart Freedom and It Will Lead You into Slavery), the title role in Ivan Karpenko-Kary's Martyn Borulia, Kindrat Halushka in Oleksander Korniichuk's V stepakh Ukraïny (In Ukraine's Steppes), and cantor Havrylo in Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi. Krushelnytsky won acclaim for his original interpretation of Tevie in Tevie-molochnyk (Tevie, the Milkman, based on the story by Sholom Aleichem) and of Lear in William Shakespeare's King Lear.

Buchma, Amvrosii [Bučma, Amvrosij], b 14 March 1891 in Lviv, d 6 January 1957 in Kyiv. Prominent stage and screen actor, director, and teacher. Buchma began his stage career at the Ruska Besida theater in Lviv in 1910. In 1917 he studied at the Lysenko Music and Drama School in Kyiv. In 1920 he worked in the Kyiv Ukrainian Drama Theater and in 1923–6 in the Berezil theater, where he played such memorable roles as Jimmie Higgins in an adaptation of U. Sinclair's novel, Leiba in an adaptation of Taras Shevchenko's Haidamaky (The Haidamakas), Jean in Prosper Mérimée's La Jacquerie, and the Fool in William Shakespeare's Macbeth. At the same time he became a film actor and later left the theater to devote himself solely to the cinema (1926–30). The main roles in which he appeared in these years were those of Jimmie Higgins, Mykola Dzheria, Taras Shevchenko, Taras Triasylo (in films of the same titles), the leading role of Hordii in Nichnyi viznyk (The Night Coachman) and the German soldier in Oleksander Dovzhenko's Arsenal. In 1930–6 Buchma returned to the Berezil theater (called the Kharkiv Ukrainian Drama Theater from 1935), now in Kharkiv, and played such roles as Dudar in Ivan Mykytenko's Dyktatura (The Dictatorship), Puzyr in Ivan Karpenko-Kary's Khaziain (The Master), and Haidai and Krechet in Oleksander Korniichuk's Zahybel’ eskadry (The Destruction of the Squadron) and Platon Krechet. From 1936 to 1954 Buchma worked as an actor and director in the Kyiv Ukrainian Drama Theater and in film. His was one of the best portrayals of Mykola Zadorozhny in Ivan Franko's Ukradene shchastia (Stolen Happiness).

Buchma played in over 200 different roles. He depicted comic, dramatic, and tragic figures equally well. He directed the film Za stinoiu (Behind the Wall, 1928) and the play Nazar Stodolia at the Kyiv Ukrainian Drama Theater in 1942 (he also co-directed this play with Leontii Dubovyk in 1951) and co-directed Ivan Kotliarevsky's Natalka Poltavka (Natalka from Poltava) at the Kyiv Theater of Opera and Ballet with Volodymyr Manzii in 1951. From 1940 Buchma lectured at the Kyiv Institute of Theater Arts and in 1946–8 was the artistic director of the Kyiv Artistic Film Studio.

Sinema

The Dovzhenko Film Studios ( Natsional'na kinostudiya khudozhnikh filmiv imeni O. Dovzhenka) Its history begins in 1920's when the All-Ukrainian Photo-Cinema-Directorate (VUFKU) announced concourse on a project proposition for the construction of a cinema-factory in 1925. Out of 20 of them was chosen the project of Valerian Rykov who led his architect group composed of students of the Architectural Department of Kiev Art Institute. With the construction of the O. Dovzhenko Film Studios beginning in 1927, it was at the time the largest in the Ukrainian SSR. Although the filming pavilions were still unfinished a year later, movie production had begun. Many memorial plates are located within the studios in memory of the many film producers which had once worked here. One film pavilion is named Shchorsovskyy, because Olexandr Dovzhenko shot his movie, Shchors, there. This area of the studios is currently used as a museum.

Dovzhenko, Oleksander [Dovženko], b 10 September 1894 in the village of Sosnytsia, Chernihiv gubernia, d 25 November 1956 in Moscow. Film director. After graduating from the Hlukhiv teachers' seminary in 1914, Dovzhenko worked as a teacher in Zhytomyr. During the struggle for independence (1917–20) he participated in the revolutionary events in Kyiv and in 1919–20 belonged to the Borotbists. In 1921–3 he worked in Warsaw and Berlin as a member of Ukrainian diplomatic missions. In 1923–6 he drew caricatures for the newspaper Visti VUTsVK in Kharkiv and played an active role in the literary and artistic life of the city. He had begun studying painting in Berlin and continued to paint in Kharkiv.

In 1926 Dovzhenko began to work as a film director at the Odesa Artistic Film Studio. His first films were Vasia—reformator (Vasia, the Reformer), Iahidka kokhannia (The Berry of Love, 1926), and Sumka dypkur'iera (The Diplomatic Courier's Bag, 1927). Drawing on Ukrainian history, in 1927 he created the film Zvenyhora, which is considered to mark the beginning of Ukrainian national cinematography. Dovzhenko's expressionist film Arsenal (1929) is devoted to the revolutionary events in Kyiv in 1918. His last silent movie, Zemlia (The Earth, 1930), dealing with the collectivization drive in Ukraine, is a masterpiece. Dovzhenko was severely criticized as a Ukrainian nationalist for this film and for his next film, Ivan (1932), about the building of the Dnieper Dam. He was forced to move to Moscow, where he lived as if in exile until his death. In Moscow he made Aerograd (1935) about the Far East and spent over four years on the film Shchors (1939), which depicts the struggle of the Bolshevik army against the Ukrainian forces defending Ukraine's statehood during the Ukrainian-Soviet War, 1917–21. During the Second World War Dovzhenko made three chronicle films: Vyzvolennia (The Liberation, 1940), on the annexation of Galicia to the Ukrainian SSR; Bytva za nashu Radians’ku Ukraïnu (The Battle for Our Soviet Ukraine, 1943); and Peremoha na Pravoberezhnii Ukraïni (The Victory in Right-Bank Ukraine, 1945). In 1948 he made his last film, Zhyttia v tsvitu (Life in Bloom), which was devoted to botanist Ivan Michurin. Dovzhenko's rich lyricism, his vivid characters, and the poetic power of his landscapes earned him a reputation as ‘first poet of the cinema’ and as one of the world's leading film directors. An international jury in 1958 ranked his Zemlia among the 12 best films in world cinematography.

From the beginning of the Second World War Dovzhenko devoted more of his time to writing than to directing. He wrote a few dozen short stories, mostly about Ukraine's tragic fate during the Second World War, and a number of novels of a new genre, ‘film novels’: Ukraïna v ohni (Ukraine in Flames, 1943), prohibited from publication by Joseph Stalin because of its nationalism and published posthumously only in excerpts (the full version appeared only in 1990 and 1995); Povist’ polum’ianykh lit (The Tale of Fiery Years, 1945); and Poema pro more (A Poem about the Sea, 1956). His autobiographical novel Zacharovana Desna (The Enchanted Desna, 1955) is a literary masterpiece. All of his novels were published posthumously.).

Painting

Cubism. Artistic movement that regarded painting not as a depiction of nature, but as a free play of forms subject to loosely treated laws of geometry. Cubism reduced all forms to their primary state—sphere, cone, cylinder, and cube—and at the same time introduced new materials into art, often combinations of paint, wood, metal, glass, wire, and so on.

Mykhailo Boichuk and his school were closely related to the cubist movement as early as the mid-1910s. Alexander Archipenko is considered to be the first cubist sculptor in world art. The following Ukrainian artists made use of the innovations introduced by cubism: Vasyl Yermilov, Vadym Meller, Oleksander Bohomazov, Mykhailo Andriienko-Nechytailo, Oleksa Hryshchenko, and Pavlo Kovzhun. They often combined the cubist style with Constructivism.

Boichuk, Mykhailo [Bojčuk, Myxajlo], b 30 October 1882 in Romanivka, Ternopil county, d 13 July 1937 in Kyiv. Influential Ukrainian modernist painter, graphic artist, and teacher. Boichuk studied at Yuliian Pankevych’s art studio in Lviv (1898), a private art school in Vienna (1899), and the Cracow Academy of Arts (1899–1905). He continued his studies at the Munich and Vienna academies of art and exhibited his works at the Latour Gallery in Lviv in 1905 and in Munich in 1907. While living in Paris (1907–10), Boichuk visited the Académie Ranson and P. Sérusier's studio, and, in 1909, he founded his own studio-school, at which his future wife Sofiia Nalepinska, Mykola Kasperovych, S. Baudouin de Courtenay, S. Segno, J. Lewakowska, O. Shaginian, and H. Szramm studied. That year Boichuk participated in exhibitions of the Salon d'Automne, and in 1910 he and his students held an exhibition at the Salon des Indépendants on the theme of the revival of Byzantine art. In 1910 he also traveled to Italy with Nalepinska and Kasperovych.

After that Boichuk worked as a monumentalist and restorer for the National Museum in Lviv, where he was able to save numerous 15th- and 16th-century icons. In 1911 he visited Kyiv, Saint Petersburg, Novgorod the Great, and Moscow. He painted the murals in the Church of the Holy Trinity in the village of Lemeshi near Chernihiv and directed the restoration of an iconostasis in Kozelets (1912–14). In 1914 he was interned by the tsarist authorities because he was an Austro-Hungarian subject.

After the Revolution of 1917 Boichuk lived in Kyiv. There he became a founding professor of the Ukrainian State Academy of Arts (later the Kyiv Art Institute), taught monumental art at the academy, and was briefly its rector. In 1925 he was one of the founders of the Association of Revolutionary Art of Ukraine (ARMU). He visited Germany and France (1926–27). Boichuk formed a school of monumental painting, which continued to develop in Ukraine into the 1930s. He directed a group of artists who contributed monumental paintings and designs to revolutionary celebrations, agit-trains and agit-ships, and the interiors of the Kyiv Theater of Opera and Ballet during the First Congress of Regional Executive Committees (1919), the Kharkiv Opera Theater for the Fifth All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets (1921), the Ukrainian SSR's pavillion at the First All-Russian Cottage Industry and Agriculture Exhibition in Moscow, and the Kyiv Co-operative Institute (1923).

In collaboration with his students, Boichuk created ensembles featuring monumental paintings on contemporary subjects at the Lutsk Army Barracks in Kyiv (1919), the Peasant Sanatorium in Odesa (1927– 8), and the Kharkiv Chervonozavodskyi Ukrainian Drama Theater, working at the latter in the then compulsory style of socialist realism. He was arrested by the NKVD in November 1936 on the charge of being an ‘agent of the Vatican,’ interrogated and tortured, and shot on the same day as his two leading students, Ivan Padalka and Vasyl Sedliar. Four months later his wife was also shot.

The works of Boichuk and his school—which included his brother Tymofii Boichuk, Padalka, Sedliar, Nalepinska, Kasperovych, Oksana Pavlenko, Antonina Ivanova, Mykola Rokytsky, Kateryna Borodina, Oleksandr Myzin, Kyrylo Hvozdyk, Pavlo Ivanchenko, Serhii Kolos, Okhrym Kravchenko, Hryhorii Dovzhenko, Onufrii Biziukov, Mariia Kotliarevska, Ivan Lypkivsky, Vira Bura-Matsapura, Yaroslava Muzyka, Oleksandr Ruban, Olena Sakhnovska, Manuil Shekhtman, Mariia Trubetska, Kostiantyn Yeleva, and Mariia Yunak—are an important contribution to Ukrainian and world art.

While in Paris at the end of the 1910s, Boichuk witnessed the birth of modern art and attempted to blend it with aspects of the Ukrainian tradition, developing a style of simplified monumental forms. In his compositions, surfaces are rhythmically integrated with lines. This style became known as Boichukism. Its followers made up a dominant part of the membership of ARMU, which was often attacked by official critics for ‘formalism,’ ‘bourgeois nationalism,’ and focusing on the countryside. After ARMU was disbanded and Boichuk was executed, most of his frescoes and paintings were destroyed, including those found in Lviv museums after the Second World War. Since then, however, a number of Boichuk’s works have reappeared. The principles of Boichukism were followed by a large number of admirers, who sometimes (went on to create their own schools.

Constructivism. Artistic movement based on the principle of functionalism and favoring mostly simple geometric forms. In architecture constructivism emphasizes the structure itself and the building materials (reinforced concrete, metals, glass) and avoids decoration. In Ukraine constructivism was popular after 1920 and manifested itself in a series of factorylike buildings: the Building of State Industry and the Projects Building (1925–9, designed by S. Kravets and S. Serafimov), the Post Office (1927–9, by A. Mordvinov), and the Railwaymen's Club in Kharkiv; the Palace of Culture in Kadiivka; the Palace of Labor in Dnipropetrovsk, the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station, and so on. After the war a number of buildings in the constructivist style were built, mostly in Kyiv: the Dnipro Hotel (1960), the Sports Palace (1960), the Boryspil airport (1965); Tarasova Hora Hotel in Kaniv (1961), and a large number of palaces of culture throughout Ukraine.

In painting, constructivism uses abstract combinations of lines, objects, and colored planes. The first constructivist artists in Ukraine were Alexander Archipenko, Kazimir Malevich, A. Ekster, and Mykhailo Andriienko-Nechytailo. The influence of constructivism and cubism is evident in Ivan Kavaleridze's monuments to Fedor Artem (1923–4 in Artemivsk (Donetsk oblast) and 1927 in Sviatohorsk) and to Taras Shevchenko (1926 in Poltava). Constructivism was adopted most widely in stage design. In the 1920s and at the beginning of the 1930s it was the dominant style in the theaters of Ukraine. Its main exponent was Vadym Meller and his students—Dmytro Vlasiuk, Mylitsa Symashkevych, and others—at the maquette workshop of the Berezil theater. Other prominent stage designers who worked in this style were M. Matkovych, V. Miuller, and Yurii Pavlovych at the Odesa Ukrainian Music and Drama Theater; Borys Kosariev, at the Kharkiv Chervonozavodskyi Ukrainian Drama Theater; Heorhii Tsapok at the Kyiv Ukrainian Drama Theater; and Anatol Petrytsky, Oleksander Khvostenko-Khvostov, and Ivan Kurochka-Armashevsky at the Kyiv Theater of Opera and Ballet, the Kharkiv Theater of Opera and Ballet and the Odesa Opera and Ballet Theater. Constructivists took an architectural approach to graphic art and used various scripts. Vasyl H. Krychevsky, Pavlo Kovzhun, Vasyl Yermilov, H. Tsapok, Vladimir Tatlin, Leonid Khyzhynsky, and Olena Sakhnovska were among those known for their graphics.