The oeuvre of Oleksandr Stachow-Shuldyzhenko — A legacy steeped with many cultures

With the accelerating pace of information flow, the intensification of cultural dialogue, and the pressure of foreign cultural models, it is crucial as never before to identify, research, preserve and present our assets. However, due to various historical, social, and political obstacles, far from all the achievements of our own culture have been revealed and highlighted. For example, the creative legacy of the artist Oleksandr Stachow-Shuldyzhenko (1922–1988) is still known only to specialists. This is surprising because artworks of this level could adorn the collections of well-known museums.

Stachow-Shuldyzhenko is a Ukrainian, British, and Polish artist, decorator, sculptor-monumentalist, and art theorist. He was born in Kyiv and received his art education in Kyiv and London, where he went during the Second World War. In 1954, he came back as a repatriate to Ukraine.

The artist’s works were undervalued for years. On the one hand, they did not correspond to the official socialist realist canon, on the other hand, they differed significantly from the works of the nonconformist artists from the subcultural milieu. Thus, Shuldyzhenko’s works were not congruent with official art or the underground.

He continued to develop the ideas of the British young Neo-Romantic movement, the Movement and Kitchen Sink Realism, but a unique personal style dominates in his works as well as his subject matter and outlook. It is, first, about graphic works and painting. The artist was also engaged in developing toy books for children and manual books for artists; created paper sculptures and monumental works.

In England, he communicated with the artists Francis Bacon and John Bratby, the writer and critic Philip Arthur Larkin; befriended and for some time worked together with Lucian Michael Freud.

Stachow-Shuldyzhenko was interested in brain activity processes, psychological and physical states during memory or contemplation of visual images, which was reflected in his drawings and manuscripts about art. Several of the artist’s texts are devoted to the search for controlled mechanisms of psychological states’ influence on human health. In the mid–1970s, he maintained a scientific correspondence with the world-renowned oncologist Sir David Waldron Smithers.

During the author’s lifetime, two of his exhibitions took place, but «departmental» — that means, not for the public: in the editorial office of the magazine Decorative Art in the mid–1970s (paper sculptures) and an exhibition of candidates for admission to the Union of Artists in 1982 (graphics and photographs of monumental works, paper reliefs). The artist’s easel works were not accepted for official exhibitions however he arranged many «apartment exhibitions» at his friends’ homes.

More acceptable for the official culture of the USSR were his monumental compositions — mostly metal and concrete reliefs and his decorative works. Although they were made for the sake of earning, on custom-made themes, they are aesthetically creative and innovative.

Stachow-Shuldyzhenko’s world outlook and creativity developed under the pressure of various cultural traditions. In the USSR, Italy, Poland, and the United Kingdom, he did not «belong» to any of the above, everywhere he avoided social dependence and assimilation. In a world divided into national and ethnic societies, he belonged to a professional community of artists. More broadly — to those artists who combined the traditions of several cultures in their life and work.

The book traces the types of social interaction of Stachow-Shuldyzhenko with the multicultural environment at the individual, collective, and professional levels. Among many possible identities, the artist chose a professional identity, which required a conscious way of resistance to circumstances and even self-sacrifice.

Recently, the legacy of artists belonging to the cultures of different countries is becoming more and more relevant. He lived and worked in a multicultural environment, which brings his experience closer to today’s issues.
As well, various aspects of the artist’s oeuvre are considered — his graphics, monumental art, and theoretical works. Previously unknown cycles have been discovered — for example, surrealist works of 1945–1947, or graphic series of the late 1980s.
The book provides a periodization of the artist’s artistic legacy, his biography is researched (with previously unknown archival documents).

A wide range of historical, political, and cultural material is presented, without which it is impossible to understand the life path and ideas of the author.

Under different circumstances, Oleksandr spelled his last name differently: Shuldyshenko, Stachow, Shuldyzhenko. He signed some works as StachowShuldyzhenko or Shuldyzhenko-Stachow. In this book, it is chosen to write StachowShuldyzhenko, as amore complete and chronologically justified version ofthe last name: first the artist Stachow appeared, later — Shuldyzhenko. Thus: Stachow-Shuldyzhenko.

As Iryna Avdiyeva wrote: «I think that death is not final — as long as there is continuity. My spiritual essence consists of countless particles borrowed from the people I love»*. Indeed, acquaintances, friends, and relatives of the artist who remember Shura — Oleksandr Stachow-Shuldyzhenko — keep some part of him with them, for them, probably he always exists.

I hope that thanks to this book, many readers will remember the image of Oleksandr Stachow-Shuldyzhenko, an artist and romantic, who believed that art and the profession of an artist would protect him from the troubles of life and the trials of fate. And because he believed in it, so it was.
I also hope that readers will remember his amazing and always relevant works because sincerity and individuality were and remain relevant.

But for me, there are several streets in Kyiv where I am still surprised that I do not see the tall figure of the artist — these are the alleys behind Besarabska Square, in Kyiv, especially Kropyvnytskyi Street. It was there, as remembered, in front of the entrance of building No. 6, that Oleksandr met the guests «in an unbuttoned coat with a long, long scarf loosely thrown around his neck»**.

The monograph was published as part of the fundamental research «Actual Discourses of Modern Culture» of the Modern Art Research Institute of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine and is intended for specialists in the field of contemporary art, art critics, art theorists, university students, and a wide range of readers.