About the event

An array of high-quality exhibitions take place concurrently in and around Basel, creating a region-wide art week. One of the "must-visits" this year is Born in Ukraine in Kunstmuseum Basel. During the Art Basel days, the presentation and an exclusive curator’s tour of the exhibition “Born in Ukraine” will be held with the support of the Museum of Art and History of Geneva and the Art Support Fund.
49 paintings from the 18th through the 20th century and other works from Kyiv city are exhibited now temporarily in Switzerland. The art museum showcases works by 31 artists from the Kyiv National Art Gallery, Ukraine’s national art museum, the pieces that were rescued and evacuated from Ukraine during bomb attacks on the city of Kyiv. The works were transported for the exhibition after the massive shelling of the Ukrainian capital, when the museum itself suffered destruction.
Among the artists whose work is on display in the exhibition are Illiia Repin, Dmytro Levytsky, Volodymyr Borovykovsky, Arkhyp Kuindzhi, Mykola Yaroshenko, and Davyd Burliuk. 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 home. 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.