Association of Artists of the Red Ukraine

Association of Artists of the Red Ukraine 

(AKhChU), a creative group dating from 1923 whose charter was approved in 1926. The AKhChU was an association of Soviet Ukrainian artists composed mainly of Stankovites of the realistic school (V. S. Averin, I. S. Izhakevich, F. G. Krichevskii, A. V. Marenkov, G. P. Svetlitskii, K. D. Trokhimenko, and others). In its ideological-creative orientation the AKhChU was close to the AKhRR (Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia) in most respects; it strove to develop traditions in Ukrainian art of the second half of the 19th century. It had branches in many cities of the Ukrainian SSR and ran its own publishing house and poster workshop, in which artists of other associations also worked. It set up exhibitions for its branches: group exhibitions (“In Villages, Small Towns, and Cities of the Ukraine,” Kiev, 1926), All-Ukrainian exhibitions (Kharkov, 1927), and also traveling exhibitions (such as “The Cultural Campaign in the Donbas,”1928–29 and 1930). In 1929 a number of leading artists left the association, and in 1930 it was transformed into the VUAPMIT (All-Ukrainian Association of Proletarian Artists), where a utilitarian spirit and principles of thoughtless empiricism began to predominate, implanted by some of its leaders (A. M. Komashka and others).

REFERENCES

Istoriia ukrains’koho mystetstva, vol. 5. Kiev, 1967. Pages 16, 17, 19, 23, 30.
Afanas’ev, V. A. Stanovlennia sotsialistychnoho realizmu v ukrains’komu obrazotvorchomu mystetstvi. Kiev, 1967.