"Sins of Youth". The Paris Period of Oleksandr Murashka | Daria Dobriyan

The new edition of the Small Series of Ukrainian Modernism introduces readers to the Parisian period of the life and work of the prominent Ukrainian artist Oleksandr Murashka (1875–1919), which falls on the early 1900s.

Renowned researcher Daria Dobriyan has traced all possible addresses of Murashko's stay in Paris and analyzed the works he created. She explores how this early Parisian period influenced the work of the graduate of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts and how Murashko appeared in the international artistic context of the time.

The book presents the opinions and critical reviews of contemporaries, in particular the essays of Mykola Burachek, where he notes that Murashka in Paris was struck by the attitude of French artists to art: “they were interested, first of all, in “painting”, the way of applying paint, color searches, the search for form, the juiciness, the boldness of the “stroke” and so on. And the artists of Paris were completely indifferent to the content, to the very “that”: the content, the plot had to serve painting, was necessary insofar as it provided the best opportunity to reveal “painterly” tasks.” The author examines these opinions in detail and presents her own conclusions.

The publication is richly illustrated with letters, documents, and works by Oleksandr Murashko and his foreign colleagues.