Born in Ukraine at the Kunstmuseum Basel

On the 16th of June, the presentation and an exclusive curator’s tour of the “Born in Ukraine” exhibition were held at Kunstmuseum Basel. The event was supported by the Museum of Art and History of Geneva and the Art Support Fund.
The event was held concurrently with this year’s Art Basel. The exhibition is one of the ‘must-visits’ in Basel. It features a collection of artworks by 31 artists from the Kyiv National Art Gallery, Ukraine’s national art museum, the pieces that were rescued and evacuated from the Ukrainian capital over the days of massive shelling. 49 paintings in total – from the 18th through the 20th century, as well as other works from Kyiv city, are exhibited here until July 02, 2023. 
Conceived in collaboration with the Kunstmuseum Basel, the exhibition Born in Ukraine now introduces broad audiences to art from Ukraine, offering an opportunity to discover the heritage of a part of European culture that the audience knows relatively little about.

Illiia Repin, Dmytro Levytsky, Volodymyr Borovykovsky, Arkhyp Kuyindzhi, Mykola Yaroshenko, and Davyd Burliuk are among those included in the exhibition. All these painters were born within the borders of Ukrainian lands. Many of them were trained in the Russian Empire and, later, the Soviet Union, which entailed misconception of their names belonging to the russian cultural heritage. Today these names are being restored to their rightful land. Some of the featured artists subsequently settled in Western Europe or the United States. 
In addition to these ethnic Ukrainians, Born in Ukraine also features artists with Jewish, Polish, Armenian, or Greek roots whose practices were informed by several distinct national traditions, such as Ivan Aivazovsky, Lev Lagorio, Arkhyp Kuyindzhi, Kostiantyn Kryzhytsky, Isaak Brodsky, and Davyd Shterenberg.
Kunstmuseum Basel, St. Alban-Graben 16, 4051 Basel