Andrij Kowalenko
"Holodomor"
This large canvas, with its anthropomorphic shapes in black, gray, blues, and golds, and with faces reminiscent of Picasso's "Guernica", is perhaps the Ukrainian American artist Andrij Kowalenko's most aggressively cubist work.
Although it is superficially very different from the other works in this exhibition, it shares a common visual language. The faces staring out at the viewer are not unlike the eyeless screaming face of Cymbal's "The Year 1933", and the mass of figures are an echo of the tangled heap of bodies at the base of Dmytrenko's "One Can Go Mad". The effect is heightened through the angular and jagged placement of the figures that echo the contorted figures in Dmytrenko's "1933" and Pevny's "Zemlia".
We are not sure of the exact title that the artist originally gave to this work. "Holodomor" — the title we use here — is what was given in the catalog of the retrospective exhibition of Kowalenko's works presented by the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago in 2009-2010. The original title must have been something different, as the term "Holodmor" did not come into use until several decades after the creation of the painting in 1967. Regardless, this work has always been closely associated with the genocidal famine in Ukraine.
About the artist
Andrij Kowalenko was born in the city of Zaporizhzhia on October 17, 1913. He was fascinated by art from a young age, particularly by the shapes and decorations produced at the pottery shop located near his home. He completed his secondary education in Zaporizhzhia and attended the Art Academy there. As a city resident, he was not impacted by the Holodomor to the extent that people in the villages were, but he probably faced hunger, was aware of the horrors in the countryside, and certainly would have experienced the repressive anti-Ukrainian policies of the Stalin period.
Along with untold thousands of other refugees, Kowalenko made his way west with the retreating German army, ending up in the Displaced Person camp in Raitersaich east of Nuremberg. He was active in the artistic life of the Ukrainian community there, creating stage designs for the theater group and an iconostasis for the Orthodox church, and taught art classes. In 1947 he moved to Liège, Belgium to study at the St. Luke School of Art.
Thanks to a sponsorship from a family member, Kowalenko was able to resettle in the United States in 1956. He made his home in the Ukrainian American community of Chicago, where he would spend the rest of his life. He continued his artistic work, including the painting of portraits and other commissions from community members.
Kowalenko's training in the Socialist Realism of the Soviet Union and the conservative traditionalism of the St. Luke School evolved into his earliest individual style influenced by Cezanne. After his arrival in the United States, his paintings became more sparse, used greater color contrasts, and adopted a more abstract, cubist style. In the 1980s, he began experimenting with found objects, creating mysterious, icon-like works from bottle caps, wood, metal, cardboard, and other discarded materials.
Kowalenko participated in joint exhibitions with the Chicago "Monolith" group of Ukrainian American artists, had solo exhibitions in 1975, 1977, and 1980, and was the subject of an exhibition at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in 1986. He died in Chicago on February 28, 1989. His work was presented at a major retrospective exhibition in 2009 at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, which has a significant number of his works in its permanent collection.