Artworks at the charity auction in the Royal Academy of Art, London to support the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine

Next Saturday, on the 28th of January, the Royal Academy of Arts in London will host a Charity auction to benefit the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine. The event is supported by the Natalia Cola Foundation. 

Main image: "Donbas-Chocolate", 1997, digital printing on aluminium, plexiglass (Dibond)120 x 160cm

Especially for this event, more than 30 British and Ukrainian artists and academicians donated their artworks to assist NAAU and support Ukrainian art and culture. All donated works will be exhibited in the Royal Academy on the evening of the event. The event is initiated and organised by The Natalia Cola Foundation and the Royal Academy of Arts.

Royal Academicians participating include Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley, Conrad Shawcross, Ryan Gander, Allen Jones, and former President of the RA, Sir Christopher Le Brun.

Among the Ukrainian Academicians: Pavlo Makov (Ukraine’s representative at the 59th Venice Biennale, 2022); Victor Sydorenko (President of the NAAU; Representative of Ukraine at the 50th Venice Biennale, 2003, Commissioner of the 54th and 55th Venice Biennale, 2011 and 2013 respectively); Boris Mikhailov (representative of Ukraine at the 57th Venice Biennale, 2017; winner of the international Hasselblad Award, 2000); holders of the Shevchenko Prize Tiberiy Silvashi and Anatoliy Kryvolap, as well as Lubomir Medvid and Vira Barynova-Kuleba. Participants of the 49th Venice Biennale Arsen Savadov and Oleg Tistol, as well as Sergei Sviatchenko, Professor, and laureate of the International Yellow Pencil Award/London,(D&AD), joined the charity initiative. Among the younger generation of Ukrainian artists to join the auction: Gamlet Zinkivskyi, Olesia Trofymenko, Volodymyr Manzhos (WaOne), Ruslan Tremba.

The National Academy of Arts of Ukraine is Ukraine’s leading art institution, which consists of 104 academicians and corresponding members in six specialized departments (visual art, musical art, theatre art, cinema art, art theory and history, and synthesis of plastic arts). In addition, the Academy has 38 foreign members and 27 honorary academicians, prominent representatives of the global art establishment. The Academy carries out a program of exhibitions, debates, seminars and conferences. The mission of the NAAU is the comprehensive development of the science of world and Ukrainian art and culture, providing outstanding artists with resources for the creation and exhibition of artworks.

Stephen Shore has donated a photograph that was included in his 2018 MoMA retrospective and taken in the home of a Ukrainian Holocaust survivor. Juergen Teller has given a work that was taken in 2007 while in Ukraine and exhibited in the Ukrainian Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009.

The project was conceived by The Natalia Cola Foundation to ensure the effective functioning of the NAAU, as a platform for reflecting the achievements of Ukrainian culture both in Ukraine and abroad.

Funds are being directly raised for urgent structural repair to NAAU buildings and provision of the equipment, support of scientific, publishing and exhibition activities of the NAAU, grant programme for Ukrainian artists to participate in programmes in Ukraine and abroad, digitisation support of the institution.

Vogue Ukraine, Clara Zevi Consulting, and Giorgio Armani are the partners for the event along with the Natalia Shpytkovska Art Advisory.