Main image: Olesya Trofimenko, Dancing in the red room, 2022
The project, initiated by The Natalia Cola Foundation and the Royal Academy of Arts in London, will bring together Ukrainian and international artists in their efforts to raise funds for the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine. The auction will take place on January 28 in London, and on the eve of the event, on January 9, a silent auction will be launched on the website www.saveukraineculture.com, where the works of artists will be presented.
This is an unprecedented event: for the first time in history, a prestigious British institution supports an artistic initiative outside the UK. For the auction, the organizers have collected a rich selection of lots, including contributions from real stars of modern art - Tracey Emin, Anthony Gormley, Allen Jones, and Claire Woods. Jürgen Teller presented a photo he took during a trip to Kyiv in 2007.
Stephen Shore has auctioned a photograph that was included in his 2018 MoMA retrospective. The photo was taken in the house of a Ukrainian victim of the Holocaust in the city of Bucha, Kyiv region.
Another auction gem is the edition of Ukrainian Vogue "9 1/2 Years of Vogue in Ukraine" with the autograph of the first lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska. Fashion House Giorgio Armani, for its part, will present an evening dress from the spring-summer 2022 collection at the auction.
The National Academy of Arts in Ukraine presented a number of works by famous Ukrainian artists: Anatoly Kryvolap, Oleg Tistol, Borys Mykhaylov, Tiberii Silvashi, Vira Barynova-Kuleba.
They were joined by Pavlo Makov, the representative of Ukraine at this year's Venice Biennale, and artist Olesya Trofymenko, whose large-scale embroidered canvases became the inspiration for Dior's couture collection this summer.