On Mykhailo Zhuk’s legacy

My communication with the collector gave way to an interesting conversation about the range of problems that are a matter of concern for the Ukrainian intellectual people in Odesa, in the focus of one man.

Above all, collector, local lore specialist, deputy head of Odesa Department of Ukrainian Fund of Culture, Merited Worker of Culture of Ukraine, Taras Maksymiuk shared his impressions about the best works of the Den’s 16th International Photo Exhibit, which are on display at Odesa Literary Museum these days.

“Odesa residents very much need such an exhibit in this format, with such a number, seize, artistic quality, and technical performance of the photos, and most importantly – with such a content. This is really an event. It was a symbolical sign that Odesa was the next Ukrainian city to support the cultural-educational tradition of Den after the exhibit was held in Kyiv, which is Den’s main location.”

You put much effort in popularization of your items that are connected with Ukrainian culture. Your publication of a series of postcards with works and photos from your collection is well-known.

“I called my collection ‘The House of Taras’ after my ‘patron’ Taras Shevchenko, because every single item it includes is more or less connected with this personality – these are books, paintings and graphic works, postcards, photos, folk art, and documents. I started to publish postcards back in 2009, and I have already published about 40 samples. My approach is like that: I publish only items from my collections, things with which I am personally connected. A fellow collector from Moscow said that on the territory of the former USSR I’m the only one who is holding such an action. I will continue to do this, because I have things to show. Previously I used to publish thousands of copies, these days – up to 200, and if they are distributed, this will be a rarity.”

Who’s funding the project?

“I’m funding it myself from my pension. Some of the items are sold, I can also give some cards as a present, like a set of 11 postcards during the memorable meeting with Den’s editor-in-chief Larysa Ivshyna in Odesa. Ms. Ivshyna took a special interest in the postcards with the works by Mykhailo Zhuk, in particular, stylization White and Black, his Self-Portrait, and especially three miniatures, Orchid, Thistle Flower, and Beetles, created in the 1920s.”

Mykhailo Zhuk was an extraordinary, integral and tragic person at the same time. He was soon forgotten, like it often happens. By the way, this year marks 60th anniversary of his death. When did you personally discover the phenomenon of this artist?

“This happened owing to my acquaintance with well-known Odesa collector Serhii Lushchyk. Owing to him at the beginning of the 1960s I took interest in Mykhailo Zhuk. At that time I started to collect his original works, and later bought from his son the picture White and Black, one of the most outstanding works by Zhuk in the style of secession. Since that time one of my tasks as a Ukrainian collector who was shaped namely in Odesa has been to gather such things and popularize the Ukrainian culture. As a collector, I had started with antique things. At that time I sold or changed my collection of Black Sea Cost antiquities for Ukrainian pieces of art. For a long while I have been planning to create a complex museum ‘House of Taras,’ which would include three museums: ‘Odesa to Shevchenko,’ ‘Ambrosii Zhdakha and his oeuvre,’ as well as ‘With pen and brush’– this is Zhuk again.

“Two months ago I appealed to the head of Odesa Oblast Administration Ihor Palytsia with a request to allot for the exposition the area of 400 square meters in the former House of Students in Marazliivska Street – for some period of time it was housing the oblast Prosvita. It is located close to the Taras Shevchenko Park, where a well-known monument to Kobzar was established. You can hardly find a better place in Odesa. This house with an area of over 3,000 square meters is now being used by one construction organization which maintains it. There is a need of corresponding decision of Odesa Oblast Council that would give an area needed for exposition for lifetime use for symbolical money. As soon as this museum is created, I am ready to present my collection to the city.”

You are an author of unprecedented project – a one picture exhibit, namely the picture by Mykhailo Zhuk White and Black meets this format. How was this odyssey of secession masterpiece, which from a nationwide one turned into an intercontinental one, “written”?

“Here I will repeat not the contemporaries, but only Kuindzhi, who in 1880 exhibited his famous picture Moonlight night at the Dnipro in St. Petersburg. I exhibited Mykhailo Zhuk’s work in 1988 at Odesa Art Museum. And in 1990 this exhibit took place in the Literary Museum in Kyiv, and a year later, in 1991, when the 100th anniversary of the birth of Pavlo Tychyna was marked it was shown for the first time in Kotsiubynsky Museum Preserve in Chernihiv. That was symbolical, because Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky was the first one to see the picture White and Black, where we have the first portrait of Tychyna. Kotsiubynsky noted this in his memories. Later this project was continued at Ukrainian State (currently National) Museum of Pictorial Art. When the 105th anniversary of the birth of Pavlo Tychyna was marked, this work was showcased in Pavlo Tychyna’s Kyiv Museum-Apartment. In 1999 the Fourth International Congress of Ukrainian History and Culture Researchers took place in Odesa, where this picture was exhibited in Mechnikov Odesa National University. In 2001 I received a proposition from famous collectors, in particular, Dmytro Horbachov, to display this work at the exhibit ‘Ukrainian modernism of 1910s-1930s’ in Chicago and New York, and of course I agreed. After the picture was brought back to Ukraine, at the request of the then director of the National Art Museum of Ukraine Anatolii Melnyk, the picture was included in the regular exposition of the institution he was heading, and this has lasted for various reasons for almost 10 years. In 2011 I appealed to Borys Voznytsky with a request of opening a one-work exhibit at Lviv Gallery of Art. The opening date, by a mystical coincidence for me, was September 16 – the day when Pavlo Tychyna died.”