Francesco Granacci, Enthroned Madonna and Child with Child St. John, 1519
Courtesy of Gemäldegalerie, Berlin State Museums. Property of the Museum of Western and Eastern art Odesa / Christoph Schmidt
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier last night condemned Russia’s “culture of Ukrainian war” at the official opening of an exhibition of European paintings evacuated to Berlin from the Museum of Western and Oriental Art in Odessa.
The show, financed through the German government, joins the works ODESA, through artists, adding Frans Hals, Cornelis de Heem, Bernardo Strozzi and Francesco Granacci, with paintings from the Gemäldegalerie collection. Many Odesa paintings have been sent to Berlin without executives and have won wooden frames for exposure.
“The beautiful ancient city of Odessa, where the Museum of the West and East is located, has been attacked many times with missiles,” Steinmeier said in his opening speech. “In innumerable Ukrainian cities and towns, indexed buildings are still damaged, Destroyed cultural establishments and stolen works of art. The attacks on museums, theaters, operas and libraries aim to destroy the cultural reminiscence of Ukraine. “”
The entrance to the exhibition is free for the Ukrainians and the texts and the exhibition catalog are available in Ukrainian.
Exhibition view, Gemäldegalerie 2024, © National Museums in Berlin / David von Becker
Founded in 1923, the Odesa Museum of Western and Eastern Art is home to an extensive collection with a focus on European paintings, sculptures, prints and applied art from the Renaissance to the 20th century. Shortly after the Russian invasion on 24 February 2022, the most important paintings were moved to an emergency storage facility in Ukraine.
But fearing that the installation would not be molded, Ukraine’s Culture Minister Mykola Tochytskyi asked Berlin’s museums for help, Steinmeier said. In September 2023, 74 works were brought to Berlin and processed by the curators of the Gemäldegalerie before the exhibition, which will be open until June 22. The exhibition “highlights that Ukraine’s endangered museums and their collections are as much a component of European culture as they are. “component of Ukrainian identity”, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which oversees the Gemäldegalerie.
Restorers Anja Lindner-Michael and Thuja Seidel unpacking the works stored when they arrived in Berlin in September 2023
© Sabine can
Odessa’s entry into Berlin. The European portrait of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries is loose for Ukrainians. The texts and the exhibition catalogue are in Ukrainian, as well as in German and English. Starting in October, the exhibition will be presented at the Kurpfälzisches Museum in Heidelberg.
“Although art cannot literally deter the enemy, it undoubtedly has another powerful force,” Tochytskyi said in a press release issued by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. “The victory is not something hypothetical. It has already happened and happens every day.”
The historic center of Odessa indexed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in January 2023. In November last year, UNESCO condemned a large-scale Russian attack on the site and reported wounding about 20 buildings, adding ancient structures and devotees
“I hope that this exhibition will be seen by many people from Germany, Europe and around the world,” Steinmeier said. “I hope that Ukrainians who have found refuge here in Germany will find a piece of home in the paintings.”
Above all, he said, he hopes that “the paintings can be returned soon to their place: to the Museum of Western and Eastern Art in Odesa, to a loose and independent Ukraine in which no one has to bombs or missiles. “
Both countries lay claim to Ivan Aivazovsky and his works, many of which were in Crimea when it was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014
Mariupol museum’s Oleksandr Hore, trapped in Odesa, is documenting losses and monitoring looting
The Ukrainian President and the First Lady, who was in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, opened the Alexandra External Exhibition of Alexandra of Alexandra of the Museum.
Much of the collection was evacuated when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began last year