Painting in Excess: Kyiv's Art Revival, 1985-1993

The upheavals of glasnost and perestroika followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union remarkably transformed the art scene in Kyiv, launching Ukrainian contemporary art as a global phenomenon. The previously calm waters of the culturally provincial capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic became radically stirred with new and daring art made publicly visible for the first time since the avant-garde period of the early twentieth century. As artists were freed from the dictates of the fading...