With war raging in Ukraine since 2022, numerous works of art, monuments and historic sites are facing destruction. The Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia is striving to help preserve Ukrainian art and to show its beauty and variety with the exhibition “The Awe of Ordinary Labors: 20th-Century Paintings from Ukraine,” on view January 18 to June 1, 2025.
Forty-four Ukrainian paintings from between 1930 and 1980, all from the museum’s collection, capture varieties of socialist realism. This style is characterized by its optimistic pictures of Soviet life and Communist ideologies. Artists were supposed to show the endless battle of the working class against their oppressors. Art was to show not reality, but ideals. These demands led to numerous works of Soviet art, including those produced in Ukraine, being purely political propaganda.
Nevertheless, many artists were able to navigate the margins of artistic freedom.
