Odessa's Second Avant-Garde Opens April 30 with Tour, Lecture, Opportunity to Meet Artists

New Brunswick, NJ - The first exhibition at the Zimmerli devoted to artists from Ukraine, "Odessa's Second Avant-Garde: City and Myth," focuses on nonconformist artists who worked in this fabled seaport on the Black Sea from the 1960s through the late 1980s. On view at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers from April 30 to October 19, 2014, these paintings, works on paper, and collages express the independent spirit of this Ukrainian city. Artists and writers have gravitated to Odessa for more than two centuries, finding inspiration in the dreamlike city. They disregarded politics and artistic conventions, cultivating an atmosphere that has captivated people around the world. Even in light of current events in Ukraine, Odessa stands as an example of a city capable of uniting citizens whose cultures, languages, and opinions differ, but who share the humor and lightheartedness attributed to this seaside town.

"As a cosmopolitan harbor at the far edge of the Russian Empire, Odessa embraced residents and transplants from distinct backgrounds - Jewish, Ukrainian, Greek, Russian - and united them in their creative pursuits," observes Olena Martynyuk, a Dodge Fellow at the Zimmerli and Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Art History at Rutgers, who organized the exhibition. "These artists experimented together, searching for a local identity that combined diverse ethnicities and cultures, as well as an understanding of their place in the broader context of art history. In contrast to the harsh social and political circumstances throughout the Soviet Union at the time, the sunny climate of Odessa became - and continues to be - a metaphor for autonomy and possibility."

On April 30, the opening reception begins at 4:30 p.m. Olena Martynyuk leads a tour through the exhibition for which she selected more than 50 works - many on view for the first time in the United States - from the Zimmerli's Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union. At 6 p.m., Myroslava Mudrak, Professor Emeritus from Ohio State University, presents a lecture on the art of Odessa titled "From Lucidity to Freedom: On Color and Light in the Intrepid Art of Modernist Odessa." A renowned specialist in Russian and Ukrainian avant-garde art, Mudrak's studies of unofficial art began during the final years of the Soviet era, which allowed her to witness significant late 20th-century cultural events in Odessa. She is author of "The New Generation and Artistic Modernism in the Ukraine" and "Contemporary Art from the Ukraine: An Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture," among others. Visitors to the events on April 30 also have an opportunity to meet several of the artists featured in the exhibition.

To view the complete press release, please visit http://bit.ly/OdessaOpening


Theresa C. Watson
Communications Coordinator
Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University

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