Big Sculpture Salon-2010

The 3rd Big Antique Salon will be held at the Art Arsenal between December 16 and 26, the Arsenal’s press office has announced.

This year two exhibition projects are organized with the framework of the special program “Museum Guest”: “Ukrainian Sacral Art Masterpieces” and “Kyiv Painting School,” both based on the collections of leading Chernihiv and Lviv museums, as well as the Kyiv History Museum. The exhibit will also include the silver frame of the Lady of Illinsk icon, which was made owing to the donations of Hetman Ivan Mazepa in the Troitsky Cathedral of Chernihiv in 1695. According to the Tarnovsky Chernihiv History Museum, the frame was intended for an icon created in 1658 by a famous Ukrainian icon-painter Hryhorii Dubensky. Unfortunately, unlike the frame, the icon didn’t survive until now. The frame is composed of 18 separate silver carved plates, which were connected to the wooden carcass and interconnected by nails and rivets. Its lower border is decorated by Mazepa’s coat of arms and the letters “IMHVTsPVZ”(the first letters from “Ivan Mazepa, the Hetman of the Zaporizhia Army of Her Majesty” in Ukrainian), surrounded by the fortress, the military camp and military equipment. The frame, which had been considerably damaged, was restored at the beginning of this year by the specialists of the Ukrainian National Scientific and Research Center for Restoration (this group of scientists was headed by Vitalii Holub). The visitors of the Ukrainian Museum in New York and the National Museum of Ukrainian History have already had an opportunity to see this frame. The fact that the frame, decorated with Mazepa’s coat of arms appeared in the Old Kyiv Arsenal is quite symbolic. It’s known that this building was constructed on the site of the Voznesensky nunnery, whose Abbess was Maria Magdalyna Mazepyna. In 1701-05 the majestic Voznesensky Cathedral and the Holy Virgin Protection Cathedral were erected there from the donations of Ivan Mazepa and his mother.

Art Arsenal will also present a collection of paintings from the funds of the Kyiv History Museum — works of the outstanding Ukrainian painters Serhii Shyshko and Oleksandr Khvostenko-Khvostov, which take us back to Kyiv in the second half of the 20th century.

The Ukrainian sacral art of the 16th-18th centuries will be represented by exhibits which had been kept until now in the museum deposits of the Tarnovsky Chernihiv Regional History Museum, the National Art Gallery in Lviv, the History of Religion Museum in Lviv, the Sophia Kyivska National Reserve and the Ukrainian Sacred Treasures Museum.

The exhibit visitors will also see a selection from private and gallery collections.

We remind our readers that the Big Antique Salon was founded in 2008. Two years in a row this event took place in the Ukrainian Home. During this time it was visited by nearly 150,000 people.

In 2008 this project presented paintings and sculptures of the Paris School: Amadeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brancusi, Jacques Lipchitz, Mark Chagall, Alberto Giacometti, and Mane-Katz, as well as the works of outstanding Ukrainian artists Oleksandr Arkhypenko, Hannah Orlova, Oleksandra Ekster and Mykola Hluschenko. In 2009 the Salon presented the works of Salvador Dali, Auguste Rodin, Francois Pompon, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, which are the part of a unique collection of the world famous French-Swiss foundry “Valsuani.”