Story 1: Water and Memory

From 1957 to 1959, Vitalii Kulikov served in the army in Azerbaijan. When he returned home, his native town was gone. Novoheorhiivsk, which once stood on the banks of the Dnipro in the Kirovohrad region, had disappeared beneath the waters during the creation of the Kremenchuk Reservoir.

The artist often spoke of his hometown — of the streets that no longer existed, of the river that had “swallowed” his house. Yet he never made this loss the subject of his paintings. Its trace runs deeper — in the restrained symbolism of his compositions, in the rhythm of his lines, in his pursuit of harmony and stillness as a way to preserve memory. His art is not about ruin, but about how inner form can resist disintegration.

In Kharkiv, his personal “unsunken” city became his studio — a place where everything that had vanished could be preserved in color, line, and light. Kulikov could not stand noise, rarely showed unfinished works, and could remain silent for a long time — only to later say a single sentence, precise as a brushstroke.

His friends recall: Vitalii never painted about loss. Yet everything he created was an attempt to keep the world from falling apart.

Strangely, after the artist’s death, his studio — Room No. 49 on Nimeckyi (formerly Pushkinskyi) Lane — remained almost untouched. Even now, despite the war and the fact that another artist has been working there for over a decade, it still feels alive.

About this “living museum” of Vitalii Kulikov and the life of Kharkiv’s creative studios of that era — in the next story.