HISTORY REPEATED- ARTIST/ACTIVIST IN UKRAINE

 

ALLA HORSKA born in 1929 in Yalta (on the Crimea)  was a Ukrainian artist of the 1960s, monumentalist painter, one of the first representatives of the underground art movement, dissident, and human rights activist of the Sixtiers movement in Ukraine. She was the wife of  painter Viktor Zaretsky (See previous Blog). Not only did she paint, she also designed many mosaics, found today throughout the Ukraine.

Highly intelligent, motivated, and talented, she graduated from art school with honors and later joined the Kyiv Art Institute. It was through relationships developed there, including the meeting of her future husband, that she became involved with the Creative Youth Club “Suchasnist,” the center of Ukrainian culture in Kyiv. In the early 1960s Alla joined the national revival movement in Ukraine which counted numerous intellectuals and artists of her generation.

They exhibited paintings, performed plays, read poems, and mentioned everyone and everything that was stamped out by the Soviet authorities. Ukrainian culture and history were created there.

 She was a fiery student of Ukrainian history and its cultural legacy, in particular folk art, academic and monumental painting, and the avant-garde of the beginning of the century. But her passion did not end with art.

After the artist and other dissidents discovered a mass grave in Bykivnia in the Kyiv region in 1962 (referring to the victims of NKVD), Alla’s human rights activity quickened in pace. She participated in protests. Political prisoners asked her for help, and dissidents often found shelter in her apartment. All of this resulted in an appeal to the Soviet authorities to stop the persecution.

 Of course, neither her artistic nor the human rights activities could stay unnoticed by the authorities. The artist’s apartment was watched; her phone was tapped, and her every step was monitored. She was repeatedly questioned by the KGB and unsuccessfully “recruited” to their ranks.

On November 29, 1970, Alla was found dead in her father-in-law’s house in Vasilkiv, Kyiv Oblast where she arranged to collect an old family sewing machine. The investigation, led by the Kyiv prosecutor’s office, concluded that her father-in-law had killed her out of personal animosity, and then committed suicide. However, from the outset, friends and acquaintances suspected political murder at the hands of the KGB for her sustained activism. An independent investigation in the 1990s revealed an incomplete criminal file ridden with contradictions carried out with falsifications. Although the case remains officially unsolved, no one has any serious doubt as to who was responsible for Alla’s death. Alla Horska was only 41 when her life was tragically cut short. She left behind a husband and a young son.

Her funeral on December 7, 1970, turned into a civil resistance campaign. Her associates – the literary critic Yevgen Sverstiuk, poet Vasyl Stus, human rights advocate Ivan Gel, and civil activist Oles Sergienko made speeches. The event was not allowed by the investigative commission and all of those who spoke were arrested a short time later. Two years after the death of the artist, mass arrests began among the Ukrainian intelligentsia. As a result, for some, it was the beginning of the end. For example, the literary critic Ivan Svitlychny and the poet Vasyl Stus were both arrested, and both of their lives ended as a direct result of Soviet imprisonment.

Her works are housed in the collections of the National Art Museum in Kyiv, the National Museum in Lviv, the Central State Archive Museum of Literature and Art, the Museum of the Sixtiers, the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Soviet Nonconformist Art at Rutgers University, and the Checkpoint Charlie Berlin Wall Museum, among others.

Art:  Top photo of Alla in 1940s.

   Painting top right- Swan Lake

    Painting left- Dancing peasants

    Painting right- Self Portrait with son, (6 year old Oleksii)

    Bottom-   Mosaic -"The WInd" in Mariupol

            July 2022

ANOTHER FAVORITE FROM THE UKRAINE

 

 

VIKTOR ZARETSKY was born in Bilopillya, Ukraine in 1925.  A graduate of the Kyiv State Art Institute, he taught there and worked as a graphic artist.

He and his wife Alla Horska  (Next Blog) were part of the “Sixtiers”, a name given in Ukraine to the 1960s group of artists who rejected the principles of Socialist Realism.* With their creativity they refused to let their artworks (paintings, poems, plays, etc.) serve the interests of the Soviet authorities.

 This dissident movement advocated the development of the Ukrainian language and culture as a whole, laying the foundations for the realization of the rights of the Ukrainian people to their own statehood. That is why the Sixtiers were often followed, summoned for questioning, arrested, and even sent to the penal colonies.

 At the beginning of his career, Viktor addressed the themes that resonated with Socialist Realism. However, he did not paint portraits of leaders. His paintings and mosaics reflect themes that found echoes and empathy within himself. For example, the themes of peasant and miner labor. He is often called the Ukrainian Gustav Klimt, yet  he developed his own artistic language making his paintings unique.

"Zaretsky saw in Klimt his own alter ego, found in him something that he had no chance to experience, namely freedom of creativity without ideological limitations.”  –Olesya Avramenko.

1970 was a tragic year for the artist. He lost both his father and wife on the same day. A full investigation was never conducted and the case was labeled as domestic violence. According to officials, Viktor’s father first killed his daughter-in-law and then died by suicide by throwing himself under a train. However, there were many inconsistencies which  indicate that it might have been fabricated. Alla’s family and friends were certain that the murders were perpetrated by the KGB.  (Photo: Viktor & Alla)

 After these tragic events, there were fewer social contacts and much more work in the artist’s life. One would think that all things considered, his work would taker on a gloomy aspect, yet this was far from the case..  His Secession-style paintings, for which he was nicknamed the Ukrainian Gustav Klimt, were created in the 1970s-1980s and made him famous.

In 1990, 20 paintings by the artist were sold at Christie’s auction. In addition to museums, his paintings are found in private collections in Ukraine, Great Britain, Switzerland, and France. The value of his artworks is also indicated by the fact that his artworks are often forged.

I love the work of Klimt, so maybe this is why this artist appeals to me.

GREAT GRANDFATHER OF THE CHANT

 

Tomorrow is the feast of St. Cecilia, Virgin and martyr and the patroness of the Abbey in France founded by Mere Cecile Bruyere, OSB  (See Blog  9/21/2023) with the help of SERVANT OF GOD DOM PROSPER GUERANGER.

Great news for us Benedictines who still keep the traditional Gregorian Chant, as the bishops of France met in Lourdes on November 8, 2023, and voted to open the cause for canonization of Dom Prosper. He was a 19th-century reformer of the Solesmes monastery and the author of the book The Liturgical Year.

The local bishops will now examine his life to determine if he lived a life of “heroic virtue,” before sending the cause for canonization to the Vatican.

Dom Prosper was born in Sablé in 1805 into a working-class family. As a teenager, he felt called to serve as a Catholic priest and in 1822 entered the minor seminary at Tours.  There he came to study the writings of the Desert Fathers and began to develop a strong interest in the history of the Church and of monastic life. He was ordained in 1827.

Originally ordained a diocesesan priest, Dom Prosper noticed the Benedictine monastery at Solesmes was up for sale in 1831. He was intent on seeing it inhabited by monks again and was able to purchase the monastery with the help of donors. 

On the feast of St. Benedict, July 11, 1833, he and three others moved in. The small community was penniless, lacked prestige to attract vocations and, above all, had no experience of monastic life. Dom Prosper was its superior for twenty-eight years even though he had never received a monastic formation. Had the undertaking not been an act of faith, it would have been utter madness. But the young Prior  had a very sound sense for all things Benedictine, for the liturgy, and for the spiritual life.

He was appointed the new abbot  (a position he held for almost 40 years) and in a brief issued on 1 September 1837, Pope Gregory XVI, himself a Benedictine, raised the rank of the former Priory of Solesmes to that of an abbey, and constituted it the head of the French Congregation of the Order of St. Benedict.

Through the new Abbey of Solesmes, Dom Prosper became the founder of the French Benedictine Congregation (now the Solesmes Congregation), which re-established Benedictine monastic life in France after it had been wiped out by the French Revolution.

Helped by Mere Cécile Bruyère,  he founded the Abbey of Sainte-Cécile, near the Abbey of Saint-Pierre de Solesmes, in 1866. This monastery went on to make foundations, thus resulting in the female branch of the Solesmes Congregation.

At Dom Guéranger’s initiative from 1862 onwards, some of his disciples were sent out to look for the sources of the Church's liturgical chant, thus setting Solesmes on a path that would lead to the restoration of Gregorian chant and the publication of its repertoire.

With his book,  The Liturgical Year, Dom Guéranger helped France’s dioceses return to the Roman liturgy. He also had a great devotion to the Sacred Heart, which he regarded as the best remedy against Jansenism and was one of the reasons for his interest in St Gertrude and other mystical authors.

He was well regarded by Pope Pius IX, and was a proponent of the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and of papal infallibility.

He died on January 30, 1875, and is buried at the Solesmes monastery.

In the preface to Dom Gueranger, Dom Philip Anderson, abbot of Clear Creek Monastery in Oklahoma (which claims its roots in Solesmes), sums up Dom Prosper’s life and contributions succinctly: “The abbot of Solesmes was a man of a great and single idea. He had from the start the genial intuition of his mission, and he devoted himself entirely to it: that of restoring to our disinherited age all the scattered treasures of the thousand-year tradition of Christianity, and above all the forgotten riches of antiquity that the Church preserves in her liturgy.”

 

 

UKRAINIAN FRIEND OF KLIMT

 

Another Ukrainian artist, who has had a great influence on the younger generation, is the early modernist painter, FEDIR KRYCHEVSKY.  He was born in 1879 in Lebedyn, in the Kharkov Governorate of the Russian Empire, to the family of a Jewish country doctor who converted to Orthodox Christianity and married a Ukrainian woman.

He graduated from the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in 1901 and the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts in 1910. He traveled in Western Europe for a year, and studied briefly with Gustav Klimt in Vienna. He moved to Kyiv, where he served as professor and director at the Kyiv Art School from 1914 to 1918.

 In 1917, he was one of the founders and a rector (from 1920 to 1922) of the Ukrainian State Academy of Arts. When the academy was abolished, he worked as a professor at the Kyiv State Art Institute, eventually becoming its rector. He remained in Kyiv at the onset of the Second World War, and kept his position at the institute, trying to save it in difficult conditions during the German occupation of Kyiv.

He served as the chairman of the Union of Ukrainian Artists that tried to improve the conditions of artists during the occupation. He was extremely popular among the artist-colleagues, faculty at the institute and the students, and no one betrayed his Jewish origins to the German authorities, saving him from the Babi Yar massacre.

He moved to Königsberg in the summer of 1943, to join his brother Vasyl, a graphic designer. He attempted to flee west to escape the advancing Soviet troops, but the train in which he was traveling was overtaken. 

Fedir was arrested by the NKVD as a collaborator, but his interrogations elicited nothing that could incriminate him, so he was stripped of all his titles and honors and sent to exile to the village of Irpin near Kyiv where he died of starvation during the famine in 1947, despite the food help that was receiving from his student Tetyana Yablonska.

Twelve years after his death Fedir was rehabilitated. In 1959 the first exhibition of his works was held in Kyiv, and information about his work began to be published.

 In total, he produced close to a thousand works, including narrative compositions, portraits, landscapes, drawings. His early work remains the most valuable and appreciated part of his oeuvre. It was formed under the influence of Gustav Klimt and Ferdinand Hodler and combined Secessionist aesthetic principles with folk and Icon sensibilities. His later work, although solid in execution, suffered from ideological constraints of Socialist Realism.

For 30 years, Fedir was one of the leading figures in Ukrainian art. In 1911 and 1913 he organized the first strictly Ukrainian art exhibitions. Beginning in 1897, his work was exhibited at over 34 shows in and outside Ukraine. He was also a successful teacher, whose students included many famous Ukrainian artists.

 Fedir's triptych "Life" remains one of the iconic examples of Ukrainian modernism.  (Painting to left part of this work). The work combines the elements Art Nouveau and Ukrainian Religious paintings. Each painting contains respectively eternal themes of life — love, achievement and loss. Fedir's modern touch to the pictures, like planar-linear rhythm and harmony of colors, enriched the paintings' classical interpretation.

He had many students throughout his long career, notably Boris Kriukow and Tetyana Yablonska (See Blog  April 2022).

There is a street in Kyiv named in his honor.

Art:   Top- Self Portrait

 Botttom left- Part of "Life" triptych

JOYOUS ART- IN THE UKRAINE

 

We have not forgotten the Ukraine in our thoughts and prayers, in the midst of another war, in the Holy Land. So many people right now are asking for prayers. We are all effected by what is happening, and the suffering of others weighs on our hearts.

 Here is a Ukrainian artist  who brings joy to my heart in her colorful work.

 VERA IVANOVNA BARINOVA-KULEBA was born in 1938 in the small village of Rymarivkа in the Poltava region of the Ukraine. She Graduated from Kyiv state art institute in 1965. Studied in the creative workshops of the Academy of arts of the USSR.

 A graduate of Kiev Art Institute, Vera started in Social Realism, before becoming one of the leading artists in post-Soviet Ukraine; her works represent a fusion of the modern and the timeless in Ukrainian folk life.

Since 1994, she has been a professor at the National Academy of Art and Architecture. Her works hang in the National Art Museum and have been exhibited in Switzerland, France, USA, Russia, Germany, and Britain. Several of her paintings were offered for sale at Christie's, London in 1990.

THE WHITE ROSE- MARTYR

SERVANT OF GOD WILLI GRAF was a German member of the White Rose resistance group in Nazi Germany. The Catholic Church in Germany included Willi in their list of martyrs of the 20th century. In 2017, his cause for beatification was opened.

Willi was born in 1918 in Kuchenheim near Euskirchen. In 1922, his family moved to Saarbrücken, where his father was a wine wholesaler and managed the Johannishof, the second largest banquet hall in the city. At the age of eleven, he joined the Bund Neudeutschland, a Catholic youth movement for young men in schools of higher learning, which was banned after Hitler and the Nazis came to power in 1933. In 1934, he joined the Grauer Orden ("Grey Order"), another Catholic movement which became known for its anti-Nazi stand.  

Although compulsory at the time, he refused to associate with the Hitler Youth, even when he was threatened with becoming ineligible to go to University unless he joined.  While other future members of the White Rose (a nonviolent intellectual  resistance group led by five students and one professor at the University of Munich)  initially embraced the Hitler Youth, Willi never did. In 1935, at the age of 17, he and a few friends marched in an annual May Day parade. The parade was dominated by swastikas, brown-shirted Hitler Youth troops marching in formation, and "Sieg Heils." However, Willi and his friends marched under their tattered school flag, making great effort to stand out from their peers. They did not don any swastikas, or participate in any of the "Sieg Heil" salutes.   ( (Photo - Willie & his sisters, Anneliese & Marianne)

In 1937, Willi began his medical studies at the University of Bonn. In 1938, he was arrested along with other members of the Grauer Orden and charged by a court in Mannheim with illegal youth league activities. The charges were later dismissed as part of a general amnesty declared to celebrate the Anschluss. The detention had lasted three weeks. His time in jail did not weaken his decision to participate in anti-Nazi activities or organizations.

After his release, Willi was allowed to return to the University of Bonn to continue his medical studies. Willi had chosen the University of Bonn because his aunt and uncle lived in Bonn and offered to let him live with them, as well as the fact that many of his friends (including his then girlfriend Marianne Thoeren) went to that University. While there, he was required to report for military duty in August 1939. The next month, September 1939, the war officially began. The University of Bonn was then closed for the duration of the war.  After it closed, he transferred to Munich University, having completed four semesters at the University of Bonn.

While his parents never placed much emphasis on literature and written works (the only books the family owned were religious books), Willi  was a voracious reader. Serious and intelligently minded, he enjoyed reading Christian works, with one of his favorite Christian authors being  (Servant of God) Romano Guardini (see Blogs Aug. 2016 & Oct. 2017 update), one of the leading figures of the liturgical revival of the Catholic Church in Germany. He conducted an in-depth study of Christian authors in his teenage years, with a special focus on works by Romano Guardini. He also enjoyed reading poetry, foreign works, and works banned by the Nazis. Throughout his life, books were a lifeline for him. When he was serving on the Eastern Front, he would write to his friends to see if they could send him more books. In the last year of his life alone he read forty books

When in Bonn he met Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell  who were introduced to him by Christoph Probst, who took part in fencing with Willi. When Hans met Willi, he remarked, "he is one of us."

In June 1942, the activities of the White Rose first started. Having learned about mass murder in Poland and the Soviet Union, Hans and Alexander felt compelled to take action. They began writing leaflets, quoting extensively from the Bible, Aristotle, Goethe, and Schiller.  These leaflets were left in telephone books in public phone booths, mailed to professors and students, and taken by courier to other universities for distribution. Willi  was not part of the group at first. But was officially brought in July 1942.

 (Photo: Left to right: Hubert Furtwangler, Hans Scholl, Willie Graf and Alexander Schmorell on the Eastern Front, 1942)

 A few weeks later, the three men were deployed to the Russian Front. On the train ride to Russia, the train passed through Poland. While there, they saw the Evacutation of the Warsaw Ghetto.  In Russia, they would sneak away at night and go to the homes of Russian natives. They were allowed to return to Munich in November 1942. Returning to Bonn, he threw himself into the White Rose activities with vigor. A “favorite” activity  was graffiti on public buildings with slogans such as "down with Hitler" and "Hitler the Mass murderer!"

These graffiti campaigns put the Gestapo on high alert.  On 18 February 1943, several went to the  University to leave flyers out for the students to read. They were seen by Jakob Schmid, a custodian at the university who was also a Gestapo informer. At around midnight on 18 February, Gestapo agents arrested Willi when he returned to his apartment after meeting with his cousins. When he was captured, he asked to be allowed to go to his bedroom and change into his Wehrmacht uniform. The agents agreed to his request. While changing, he was able to hide his diary under his many books. The diary was later found by his sister Anneliese, who was also arrested by the Gestapo at the same time. She was released a few months later.

At his trial, Willi was sentenced to death for high treason.  He was beheaded on 12 October 1943 at Stadelheim Prison in Munich, after six months of solitary confinement. During this period the Gestapo used psychological torture to try to extract information from Willi about other White Rose members and other anti-Nazi movements.He  never gave up any names, taking on blame for the White Rose activities in order to protect others who had not yet been arrested.

 In his last letter to his family, he wrote:

On this day I'm leaving this life and entering eternity. What hurts me most of all is that I am causing such pain to those of you who go on living. But strength and comfort you'll find with God and that is what I am praying for till the last moment. I know that it will be harder for you than for me. I ask you, Father and Mother, from the bottom of my heart, to forgive me for the anguish and the disappointment I've brought you. I have often regretted what I've done to you, especially here in prison. Forgive me and always pray for me! Hold on to the good memories.... I could never say to you while alive how much I loved you, but now in the last hours I want to tell you, unfortunately only on this dry paper, that I love all of you deeply and that I have respected you. For everything that you gave me and everything you made possible for me with your care and love. Hold each other and stand together with love and trust.... God's blessing on us, in Him we are and we live.... I am, with love always, your Willi.

      The French street artist Christian Guémy did the portrait of Willi Graf as graffiti 

He wrote in his journal: “To be a Christian, is perhaps the hardest thing to ever become in life.” He was devoutly Catholic and it was said he would attend mass every Sunday even as a college student.  He was interested in the liturgy and composed some alternate liturgies that could be used at Mass.  

AMERICAN MARTYR IN KOREA

 

 As today we face a world with such hatred and loss of life, we find another American who is being considered for  canonization, who knew in his lifetime persecution.

SERVANT of GOD PATRICK BRENNAN was born in 1901, in Chicago, Illinois, to Irish parents.

He was educated in St Rita's High School and Quigley's Prep Seminary before studying for the priesthood in Mundelein seminary and ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Chicago in 1928, and served as a curate in Epiphany Church, St. Mary of the Lake, and St Anthonys, Joliet.

He joined the Missionary Society of St. Columban (Columban Fathers) in 1936 and  was assigned to Kwangju, Korea in 1937. In the early spring of 1939 the Maynooth Mission was entrusted by the Holy See with the care of a second mission field in the Province of Kogendo in Korea. Three Columban priests, Father Tom Quinlan, Father Pat Brennan and Father James Doyle were immediately appointed to the new territory.

Father Brennan was interned after Pearl Harbour, 8 Dec 1941, with the other priests. He was repatriated to the United States on the exchange ship “Gripsholm” in 1942 as an enemy alien.   In the United States he joined the US Army as a Chaplain, served in Normandy, Germany and the Ardennes.   Before going overseas, he won the Soldier’s medal for heroic service rendered to troops injured in a collision between a hospital train and a freight train.     

 In 1947 he was appointed missionary director of the Society in Asia.

In 1948, Monsignor Brennan was appointed Prefect Apostolic of Kwangju, Korea, where he was taken prisoner and killed by North Korean forces, September 24, 1950, in Taejon prison, along with two other Columban missionaries Fr. Thomas Cusack and Fr. John (Jack) O'Brien. His body was never recovered.

On September 24th 1050 Monsignor Patrick Brennan was killed at the Massacre of prisoners in Taejon. He was 49 years old.

In 2000, the names of the Columban Priests who were killed during the Korean War were inscribed in “The Book of Martyrs” presented to Pope (St.) John Paul II at a ceremony in the Colosseum in Rome commemorating Martyrs of the 20th Century.

CEASE WAR! FROM THE HOLY FATHER

 

                             8 nuns in Chapel-  Alfredo Ramos Martinez

November 5, Pope Francis begged for an end to war. “I continue to think about the serious situation in Palestine and in Israel where many, many people have lost their lives. In God’s name, I beg you to stop: Cease using weapons! I hope that avenues will be pursued so that an escalation of the conflict might be absolutely avoided, so that the wounded can be rescued and help might get to the population of Gaza where the humanitarian situation is extremely serious. May the hostages be freed immediately.

There are also many children among them – may they return to their families!  Yes, let’s think of the children, of all the children affected by this war, as well as in Ukraine and by other conflicts: this is how their future is being killed. Let us pray that there might be the strength to say, “enough.”

CHANGE OUR HEARTS

 

We are only a few weeks away from Advent- one asks how did the time fly? It seems our focus for the past two years has been on war and its effects on our world. People are losing hope, especially the young.  Where do we go? What is our future, they ask. Never, at least in my lifetime, has a generation faced the unknown. My answer is, we can only pray!  And no one hears our prayers more than our heavenly Mother.

Change the hearts of leaders to seek peaceful solutions. Bring harmony to our broken world. We ask all this through your help and intercession, Most Blessed Mother, as you lead and direct us each day into greater love for and obedience to your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

 “Without forgiveness, without the ability to move beyond the evil committed, we will never get out of this situation. But the timing and methods are not easy to determine. We are still at a time where emotions play a very important role in interpersonal and community relationships. The question of rebuilding healthy relationships will certainly arise: Trust between Israelis and Palestinians has been wounded in a very deep way.

 As Christians, our task is to boldly affirm the duties of justice and peace but at the same time, to be close to people without judging, without condemning, but by welcoming: welcoming the differences, the struggles, the different perspectives. At a time when everyone is building barriers, we must be the ones with open doors.” 

 Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, created a cardinal by Pope Francis on Sept. 3, 2023

INSTRUMENTS OF PEACE

 

PEACE PRAYER OF ST. FRANCIS of ASSISI

 

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love; for it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life. Amen.

Picasso

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