Association of Revolutionary Art of the Ukraine ARMU

Association of Revolutionary Art of the Ukraine (ARMU) 

founded in 1925. In the second half of the 1920’s it was the largest association of Soviet Ukrainian artists of various orientations. It had branches and studios in many Ukrainian cities, where it organized several exhibitions. It also organized a republic exhibition in Kharkov in 1927 and the exhibition “Engravings and Drawings” in Kiev in 1928, which showed works by artists of the RSFSR, the Byelorussian SSR, and Transcaucasia. In an attempt to raise the level of Ukrainian artistic culture and create a distinctly national art that would mold the social milieu and mores, the association declared that the fine arts and the so-called production arts have equal value. Its stand against naturalism took the form of an active struggle against the influence of the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia. In 1927–31, after the artists who looked for inspiration to the 19th-century national traditions of realism (M. A. Sharonov) and to modern Western European art (L. Iu. Kramarenko, V. N. Pal’mov, A. I. Taran) left the ARMU and founded the OSMU (Organization of Contemporary Artists of the Ukraine; 1927–31), the ARMU came under the domination of disciples and followers of M. L. Boichuk (I. I. Vrona, S. A. Nalepinskaia-Boichuk, I. I. Padalka, V. F. Sedliar) and artists who held views similar to theirs (A. M. Dovgal’, E. B. Sakhnovskaia). Their conceptions of the national distinctiveness of art and the elevation of monumental art over easel art became the basis of the association’s artistic orientation. In 1929, V. I. Kasiian and several young followers of Boichuk (N. A. Rokitskii, E. V. Kholostenko) and some others left the ARMU and founded the association Zhovten’ (October). In 1930 a group of artists from Zhovten’ and some members of the ARMU united to form the VUAPKh (All-Ukrainian Association of Proletarian Artists), after which the ARMU existed only formally until disbanded in 1932.

REFERENCES

Istoriia ukrains’koho mystetstva, vol. 5. Kiev, 1967. Pages 17–19, 23, 29–30.
Afanas’ev, V. A. Stanovlennia sotsialistychnoho realizmu v ukrains’komu obrazotvorchomu mystetstvi. Kiev, 1967.