Authors
Katia Denysova1; 1 Courtauld Institute of Art, Discussion
In March 1918, during an unprecedented upheaval in Ukraine’s history, the artist Alexandra Exter opened a private art workshop in Kyiv. The Ukrainian People’s Republic had recently declared its complete independence and was fighting against the invading forces of the Russian Bolsheviks but would soon be ousted by the Germany-backed conservative and semi-aristocratic regime of Pavlo Skoropadskyi. In such a volatile environment of social disruption, Exter’s studio became the city’s leading artistic hub and a space of encounter and dialogue for various national and cultural groups inhabiting it.
In keeping with her approach of combining the avant-garde with the folk, Exter based her classes on the study of contemporary French artists, Henri Matisse and Paul Cézanne in particular, and Ukrainian decorative art. Her studio, therefore, attracted aspiring artists from Kyiv’s Jewish, Russian and Ukrainian communities, who wanted to learn about the latest and most radical developments in European art while synthesising them with elements of their cultural heritage.
Of mixed origin and an active participant in transcultural networks of artistic exchange, Exter’s profile and art challenge the established notions of cultural and national identities, revealing them as contingent. Using her studio and teaching methodology as a case study, this paper examines the intercultural entanglements and ideas of nationalism in Ukraine during 1918–19, thus offering an alternative lens for studying the country’s minority histories. 
