Ukraine recognises paintings by Malevych and Riepin as national cultural heritage

The expert and fund commission of the Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications of Ukraine included 11 unique museum items from four museums in the State Register of National Cultural Heritage at a meeting on 30 December 2024. Among them are works by Ukrainian artists Kazymyr Malevych and Illia Riepin [also known as Kazimir Malevich and Ilya Repin due to Russian colonisation – ed.].

Source: press service of the Ministry of Culture

Details: In particular, the painting Suprematism No. 65 by Malevych from the collection of the Kharkiv Art Museum was recognised as part of Ukraine’s national heritage. It is a vivid example of the Suprematist style, which Malevych founded in 1915.

Also from the collection of the Kharkiv Art Museum, the State Register included a painting by Riepin, Cossacks are Writing a Letter to the Turkish Sultan. The artist worked on two versions of the painting for almost 20 years, making expeditions to the cities where people from the Zaporizhzhian Sich had settled.

Another important piece that was included in the state register is the Aprakos Gospel of 1707 from the collection of the Sumtsov Kharkiv Historical Museum. This is a unique printing masterpiece, an original copy of a rare illustrated large-format Ukrainian Cyrillic old book and one of the most prominent projects in the history of Ukrainian book publishing before the 19th century.

The expert and fund commission of the Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications of Ukraine is a permanent advisory body established to provide recommendations and proposals on the accounting and storage of museum items and museum collections, and the inclusion of unique museum items in the register of national cultural heritage. It consists of museum professionals from all over Ukraine.

How world museums recognise Ukrainian artists

In February 2023, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York changed the nationality of the Mariupol-born artist Arkhyp Kuindzhi from Russian to Ukrainian in its descriptions. They also added that it was the Russians who destroyed the museum dedicated to the artist in his hometown.

Just a few days later, the Metropolitan Museum of Art also recognised Illia Riepin and Ivan Aivazovskyi as Ukrainian, not Russian, artists. In particular, the relevant marks appeared in the caption to Riepin's portrait of the writer Vsevolod Harshyn and Aivazovskyi's seascape [both Vsevolod Harshyn and Ivan Aivazovskyi were also subjected to Russian colonisation and their names in the Russian spelling, Vsevolod Garshin and Ivan Aivazovsky, are better known – ed.].

In March 2023, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (the Netherlands), which has one of the most complete collections of Malevych's works, changed its captions about the abstract artist, calling him Ukrainian.

A year ago, in January 2024, Finland's largest art museum, the Ateneum, changed the nationality signature under Riepin’s name from Russian to Ukrainian.

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