Existentialism
Existentialism is a 20th-century philosophical movement emphasizing individual freedom, responsibility, and subjectivity. It posits that "existence precedes essence," meaning people are not born with a pre-defined purpose but create their own meaning through choices and actions in an otherwise absurd, meaningless universe.
Artists of the Movement
Mykola Ge
1831–1894
Mykola Ge (1831-1894) was a painter of Franco-Ukrainian descent, a leading figure of the Peredvizhniki generation and a radical reinterpreter of biblical subjects. From 1876 until his death he lived on the khutir Ivanivskyi in Chernihiv gubernia, where he painted Ukrainian landscapes and peasants alongside his late Passion cycle.
Liubomyr Medvid
b. 1941
Liubomyr Medvid, born in 1941 in the Lviv-region village of Varyazh, is one of the leading painters of the Lviv school and a professor at the Lviv National Academy of Arts. He is a People's Artist of Ukraine and a full academician of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine, and won the Shevchenko National Prize in 2014 for his cycle «Ремінісценції». His painting moves between meticulously observed Galician landscape and large philosophical cycles on displacement, exile and Christian ethics.
Works from this Movement
Dawn. Khutir Ivanivskyi
Mykola Ge
High-resolution, unwatermarked alternative from the same Khutir Ivanivskyi landscape series, in case the watermarked 500 px 'Moonlit Night' is unusable.
What Is Truth? Christ and Pilate
Mykola Ge
Painted over his earlier canvas Mercy, this is Ge's most notorious late work: a shadowed, exhausted Christ confronted by a Pilate standing in full light. Its refusal of any idealised Saviour outraged church and academy alike and the picture was withdrawn from exhibition.
Self-Portrait with a Candle
Veniamin Kushnir
Kushnir's last self-portrait, painted the year before his death and the year of Ukrainian independence: the artist lit by a single candle, a summing-up of a career spent largely outside official art.
Babylon, from the series Reminiscences. The Prodigal Son
Liubomyr Medvid
A frontal human figure with its head thrown back is set against an ochre plane broken by blue accents and geometric forms. The canvas belongs to the Prodigal Son strand of the cycle for which Medvid received the Shevchenko National Prize.