colours of sky blue and corn yellow,
such a catchy design, playing such a
crucial role in rousing the populace.
Every flag is a shortcut to the issue, an
immediate visual reminder of what
Ukrainians are living through. It’s the
power of art.
Lviv’s magnificent opera house
has become a poster site for heroic
imagery. Those people waving flags at
us from a tiny speck of land in the Black
Sea are the defenders of Snake Island
who on the first day of the invasion
famously refused to surrender to Rus-
sian warships. Another poster shows
a pale figure in a pilot uniform they
call “the Ghost of Kyiv”, the legendary
Ukrainian fighter pilot who is
rumoured to have brought down 48
Russian planes since the war began.
Some believe he exists. Others do not.
Either way, the Ghost of Kyiv is doing
his bit to inspire his people.
So, of course, is Ukrainian art. It’s
what art does in times of war. It rallies
the national spirit and focuses it.
COVER STORY
That’s why the entire collection of our
own National Gallery was moved to
safety in a cave in Wales during the
Second World War. It’s why Henry
Moore stopped carving modernist
Madonnas during the Blitz and began
drawing huddled survivors hiding
from the bombs in the tunnels of the
London Underground. When things
grow dark, art gets real. And it sud-
denly matters more.
Back at the museum, Voznyak intro-
duces me to two artists who fled last
month from Kyiv and are now living at
the museum. I’ve heard of artists in
residence before. But they don’t actu-
ally live on site like Vlada Ralko and
Volodymyr Budnikov, who have moved
into an unused gallery with a huge bed
and a cat. All day long they sit in their
patched-up bedroom making art about
the conflict.
Budnikov is usually an abstract art-
ist, he insists. Now he’s painting skele-
tons, bombs, mutations, explosions.
Putin has done terrible things, I mutter
in sympathy. Not Putin, he snarls back.
All Russians. They’re not human. This
is what they do.
Voznyak reappears. He has organ-
ised a car that’s going to drive us out
of Lviv to a secret store where the
museum keeps some of its art in a dis-
used monastery. I can go and see it. We
drive for an hour and a half, and even-
tually arrive at a crumbling clerical
prison surrounded by a high wall. It’s
late. The formidable Ukrainian woman
who runs the outpost frogmarches me
through corridor after corridor packed
to the rafters with icons thrown away
by the Soviet soldiers when they
annexed Ukraine in 1939. Thousands
of them. Upstairs, I’m led through
another never-ending hoard of baroque
church sculptures, enough to fill ten
normal museums. This, she waves, is a
fraction of what they have.
The next morning, back in the city,I finally get to meet the Polish consul
Eliza Dzwonkiewicz, the only foreign
consul left in Lviv. The rest have gone.
So have all the ambassadors in Kyiv
except the one from Poland and the
papal nuncio from the Vatican.
Dzwonkiewicz takes us for coffee in
the town, dressed in what looks like
snazzy urban sportswear, with only
the Polish consulate badge on her arm
confirming her rank. When the war
broke out, she explains, she had these
outfits specifically made for the consu-
lar staff. War is not a time for decora-
tive diplomat wear.
I take a final stroll around Lviv’s
beautiful central square. “This is our
land. We won’t give it up,” says one
blue-and-gold billboard. “Don’t run
away. Defend,” urges another. On a par-
ticularly striking poster, a huge expanse
of red represents Russia, while a tiny
patch of yellow represents Ukraine.
“David and Goliath,” shouts the text.
“Remember What Happened.” cHutsul Woman with Child,
1912, by Ivan Trush
The painter Ivan Trush left
more than 6,000 works
when he died in 1941. The
impressionist and art critic
was as adept at portraits of
ordinary Ukrainians as he
was at landscapes — and
renowned for his use of
colour. Many of his works
are kept at the Andrey
Sheptytsky National
Museum in Lviv.Kazimierz Sichulski
Another Lviv-based artist,
Sichulski was a
contemporary of Trush and
studied in Rome, Munich
and Paris. A member of the
Young Poland modernist
art movement, he fought in
the Polish legions during
the First World War. His
work, including paintings
and stained-glass
windows, was
dominated by the
Hutsul ethnic group
of southwestern
Ukraine.Mourning Madonna, 1758, by
Johann Georg Pinsel
The 18th-century sculptor was a
leading light in the Lviv school who
favoured the rococo and baroque
styles. Surprisingly little is known
about Pinsel’s life
and death, other
than he worked in
eastern Galicia
— then part of the
Polish-Lithuaniancommonwealth — and his statues
appear in churches across Ukraine.St George
Ukrainian icon
The Russian
Orthodox church
started with the
baptism of the
Kievan Rus people in
the late 10th century,
and Ukraine has
been a centre of
religious iconography ever since.
Dragonslayer St George frequently
figures in the country’s religious
images, and his feast day heralded
the arrival of spring in the traditional
calendar.FOUR TREASURES OF UKRAINE BY LIAM KELLY
TY ONEIL/SHUTTERSTOCKAn air raid siren starts.
Voznyak ignores it and
shows me his sandbags
A reckoning The Money Changers,
c 1620, by Georges de la Tour
Fighting back An anti-Putin poster
in one of Lviv’s public placesALAMYVolodymyr Budnikov, above left, is
‘artist in residence’ with Vlada RalkoIt’s not Putin. It’s all
Russians. They are not
human. This is whatthey do
MATT CONWAY6 10 April 2022