Stolen artists / stolen identity

Ukrainians Demand Their Place in Art History


For the longest time, the intellectual property of Ukrainian people and the creators themselves have been labeled Russian or Soviet. Hovhannes Aivazian (Ivan Aivazovsky), Illya Repin, Arkhip Kuindzhi, Kazimir Malevich, Mykola Gogol, Mikhail Tarkhanov, Olena Sakhnovska, Aleksandra Ekster ( Hryhorowycz) are all Ukrainian artists often known to the world as Russian.

The National Gallery of London only renamed Degas' "Russian Dancers" into "Ukrainian Dancers" in the spring of 2022. Both paintings portray a troupe of dancers that Degas saw performing in Paris late in his life. Their dressers are so characteristic that they cannot be confused with the folk costumes of any other European nation. Their misnaming, therefore, is not a result of historical confusion but of the laziness to address the imperialistic narrative about Ukrainian culture. 

Oksana Semenik, an art historian and journalist, analyzes museum collections to find Ukrainian artists listed as Russian. While working as an assistant curator at the Zimmerli, the most extensive collection of Soviet nonconformist art in the US, Semenik researched the museum's archives to reveal that out of the 900 artists categorized as "Russian," 71 were Ukrainians and 80 were artists of other nationalities, such as Belarusian, Latvian, and Lithuanian. Semenik said that around 15% of the "Russian" collection was mislabeled.