This dissertation is a comprehensive study of the lithography artworks created by the Kyiv school of graphics in the context of the history of the development of the Ukrainian fine art. The union of the Kyiv lithographers emerged on the basis of the Kyiv State Art Institute (KSAI), which laid the foundation of the higher art education in Ukraine and nurtured a cohort of the prominent artists. In the second half of the 20th century, the Kyiv artists who have completed their studies at KSAI were able to continue to create their artworks in the lithography technique at the Experimental Printmaking Workshops of the Kyiv section of the Union of the Ukrainian Artists (KS UUA) and to fulfill the state orders at the Kyiv Combine of Monumental and Decorative Art (“Khudozhnyk” Creative and Production Association) affiliated with KS UUA. At the end of the 1990s, the combine and the printmaking workshops ceased their operations due to the difficult financial situation, which caused the decline of the flat printing technique, and also the artists of Kyiv lost the opportunity to reproduce their lithographs. In the beginning of the 21st century a new stage in the development of the lithography art in the Kyiv artistic environment was associated with the Publishing and Printing Institute of the National Technical University of Ukraine "Kyiv Polytechnic Institute" (PPI NTUU KPI).
The general picture of the development of the lithography art created by the Kyiv graphic school in the second half of the 20th - the beginning of the 21st centuries as a separate phenomenon in the graphic art of Ukraine, was reproduced on the basis of systematization and analysis of a significant volume of the literary sources. An important basis for the research of the lithography artworks of Kyiv graphic school was study of the original lithographic sheets, which were stored in the repositories of the main Kyiv museums, educational and methodology funds of the Graphic Arts Department of the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture (NAFAA) and private collections.
In this dissertation, the genesis of the development of lithography as a flat printing technique is revealed in a chronological-historical sequence. Specifically, in the context of exploring the literary sources, the chronology of the development of lithography as a type of the flat printing from the moment of its invention at the end of the 18th century by the Bavarian A. Zenefelder and its spread in the European cultural environment with an emphasis on the stages of its development on the territory of Ukraine was streamlined.
Based on the results of this research, the origin of the leading lithography centers of Ukraine (in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Lviv) which were established on the basis of the higher educational institutions (Kyiv State Art Institute, Kharkiv Art and Industrial Institute, Odesa Art Institute, Ukrainian Academy of Printing) was observed, the names of lithographers of the main graphic schools were determined and the importance of their activities was analyzed.
The Kyiv lithography school originated from the lithography workshops of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra and the printing houses of the family of printers Stefan and Vasyl Kulzhenko.The establishment of the lithography workshop at KSAI, being the driving force for the formation of the Kyiv lithography school, was achieved through the teaching activities of the following prominent artists: V. I. Kasiyan, V. G. Yung, I. M. Pleshchynskiy.
In the proposed study, a content analysis of the lithography art of the Kyiv Graphic School was carried out, a classification of the lithographs was made according to genre and theme, to visual and stylistic features and to compositional techniques. The 1950s–1980s were marked by a dominance of the main artistic doctrine – socialist realism, which caused significant obstacles in the work of the lithography artists.
The names of the graphic artists of Kyiv, for whom lithography became a visual embodiment of their artistic outlook, their figurative and artistic searches, have been determined. In the second half of the 20th century, lithography became the leading graphic technique in the work of the following artists: B. Ginzburg, V. Kaluga, V. Novikovsky, I. Movchan, Z. Tolkachov, M. Popov, O. Ovchinnikova, A. Krvavych, V. Ivanov-Akhmetov, V. Radkо, which significantly met their artistic requests and creative intentions. Such artists as V. Kasiyan, M. Turovsky, M. Kompanets, A. Chebykin, O. Stratiychuk, N. Lopukhova, V. Nikitin and others.
The collected materials and their theoretical synthesis can be used for composing of the specific chapters of the history of the Ukrainian art (the Ukrainian graphics) in the 20th-21st centuries and become the basis for a monograph edition. The accomplishments of the proposed study will be useful both for practitioners and theorists of fine art.
