After 24 weeks of reminiscing, we’ve finally reached 1996. In the final post of the “25 Impactful Weeks” campaign, we will tell you about the exhibition that marked the beginning of the Kharkiv Art Gallery.

The first major project of the Municipal Gallery and its presentation at the same time was the project “Chronicle of Art. Kharkiv. 1980s-1990s,” carried out in cooperation with the “Vernisage” gallery in Kharkiv’s Central Exhibition Hall of the Union of Artists of Ukraine. The project represented a broad panorama of Kharkiv’s art life. The exhibition was displayed in four halls with a total area of 1000 square meters.

In its hometown, the Municipal Gallery opened a continuation of the exhibition program “Chronicle of Art. Kharkiv. 1980s-1990s” as an art festival consisting of a series of exhibitions. The subject of the exhibition was contemporary visual art of Kharkiv: painting, graphics, sculpture, and small plastics, art and graphic design, art photography, ceramics, batik.

The opening of the festival and its first exhibition “Graphics. Art Design” took place at the Municipal Gallery – works by leading Kharkiv artists were presented: Volodymyr Bondarenko, Olena Kudinova, Pavlo Makov, Natalia Myronenko. Then, on the eve of the New Year holidays, the second exhibition opened, which featured the author’s ceramics by Zhanna Soloviova, Igor and Sergiy Fomichyov, Volodymyr Shapovalov, fabric painting by Lyudmila Bulizhkina, Maria Osadcha, Natalia Papirna, Anna Chernetska, Lidia Epstein, Liliya Yarovyenko, and original works in wood by Mikhail Zhdanov.

The third part of the festival exhibition consisted of paintings by Viktor Sydorenko, Viktor Gontarev, Vachagan Norazan, Eduard Yashin, Oleksandr Vlasenko, Natalia Gontarova, Vitaliy Kulikov, and sculptures by Oleksandr Sorudeikin, Lyudmila and Felix Biyetliemsky, Sergiy Sbitnev, Oleksandr Kovalov. The final exhibition “Art Photography” was dedicated to art photography by Andriy Avdeyenko, Mykola Shabelnikov, Igor Karpenko, Viktor Kochetov, Leonid Konstantinov, Yevhen Pavlov, Oleg Malovaniy, Volodymyr Ogloblin, Volodymyr Bysov, Anatoliy Makienko, Sergiy Yeroshenko, Valeriy Baytolji, Grigoriy Okun, Oleksandr Suprun.

Over 300 works of fine art by 40 Kharkiv artists were exhibited at the gallery during the festival. The project “Chronicle of Art. Kharkiv. 1980s-1990s” received high praise from specialists and the press, demonstrated the grandeur of Kharkiv’s potential, and set the pace for the gallery’s work for many years to come!