Pure Art

Pure Art is an exhibition about «naïve» artists and their art, supplemented by works created on a «conceptual» border with contemporary, avant-garde and folk art.

Between the professional (academic) and traditional (folk art) there is a small array of extremely interesting art, which is called naïve, outsider, amateur, true, etc. This art was created by self-taught artists, who could not live without drawing. Neither technique, materials nor commercial motives were decisive in their work, but only a pure desire to create.

The exposition featured a broad range of 20th century phenomena that were subject to mutual influence and interpenetration: duplication of works created by artisans for sale at markets and fairs, naïve art, works by individual craftsmen, as well as works by talented self-taught artists who became classics of Ukrainian fine art.

The project was built as a dialogue – between classical traditions and folk painting, between naïve art and primitivism, avant-garde, as well as contemporary art.

Works by Maria Prymachenko and Arsen Savadov, Heorhii Maliavin and Oleksandr Roytburd, Hnat Tarasiuk and Oleh Hryshchenko, Olexandr and Yevhen Leshchenko were presented in one exhibition space. Classic paintings were combined with video art. Interaction with naïve art and folk painting is for a contemporary artist a kind of therapy and a challenge at the same time, which questions the bounds of his own practice. From this perspective, the naïve art is not only a resource base for the renewal of culture with a help of amators, but also a powerful ideological strategy, where freedom from stylistic conventions, the use of simple painting techniques, sincerity and a “pure heart” are intended to answer the questions of the contemporary art.

The Pure art exhibition attempted to bring the naïve art beyond the traditional “ethnographic” field and to put it in the broader context of the national artistic tradition development. The Pure art exhibit continued a number of Mystetskyi arsenal exhibition projects, such as Windows, Kateryna Bilokur. I want to be an artist and Maria Prymachenko. Imperfect.

The project is created in cooperation with the National Art Museum of Ukraine, the Museum of Ukrainian folk art, the National center of folk culture Ivan Honchar Museum, Poltava Art Museum, the Museum of Folk Architecture and Folkways of Ukraine Pyrohiv and others.