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Alla Horska
Sixties artist, stage designer, painter, monumentalist
Alla Horska (1929-1970) was one of the founders and most prominent artists of the Sixties generation. She did not recognize restrictions on creativity, freedom of speech and thought. The artist's work was based on the traditions of the Kyiv academic school, folk art, the Ukrainian avant-garde of the 1920s, and a deep knowledge of world art trends.
She was born in Yalta. Her father, Oleksandr Horsky, at various times headed the Yalta, Kyiv, and Odesa film studios, and the actor's theater studio at the Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Studio.
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Artworks
Biography
EDUCATION
1952 - 1965
1965 - 1970
Exhibitions:
In 1943, the Horska family moved to Kyiv. From 1946, Alla Horska studied at the Kyiv Art High School, graduated with honours, and in 1948 entered the painting department of the Kyiv Art Institute (Serhii Hryhoriev's studio).
In 1952, Horska married Viktor Zaretskyi, a young teacher at the Art Institute. They worked in the same studio, travelled around Ukraine together, and created many monumental works. Alla Horska's style, which did not fit into the framework of ‘socialist realism’ defined by the Communist Party, was born in her artistic travels around Ukraine, in the free communication of young artists - painters, poets, writers. At this time, the artist, who was brought up in a Russian-speaking family, consciously switched to Ukrainian.
The artist's apartment in the centre of Kyiv very quickly became one of the places where like-minded people, whom we now know as the Sixties, gathered. Alla Horska, along with Viktor Zaretskyi, Vasyl Stus, Vasyl Symonenko, and Ivan Svitlychnyi, was at the origins of the Club of Creative Youth ‘Sovremennyk’ (1960-1965). In addition to them, it included Ivan Drach, Yevhen Sverstiuk, Iryna Zhylenko, Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska, Mykola Vingranovskyi, Les Taniuk, Ivan Dziuba, Liudmyla Semykina, Halyna Zubchenko, and Opanas Zalyvakha. The young artists held discussions, art evenings, organised exhibitions, and were engaged in self-publishing.
The New Theatre was created at the KTM. Marian Krushelnytskyi became the theatre's artistic director. From the very beginning of the New Theatre's work, Alla Horska became its main artist and Les Taniuk became its director. They formed a creative tandem that in many decisions demonstrated the unity of the director and the artist. It was Taniuk who came up with the idea of creating the New Theatre as an experimental ‘search theatre’ that would revive the foundations of Les Kurbas's stage projects. Horska's style was shaped by several sources. First of all, it was the works of Ukrainian avant-garde artists Anatol Petrytskyi, Vadym Meller, and Oleksandr Khvostenko-Khvostov. The second component was the work of Hanna Sobachko-Shostak, Maria Prymachenko, and Oleksandr Sayenko.
For the founders of the New Theatre, it was important to return to the national culture the names banned by the Soviet authorities. In particular, Les Kurbas and Mykola Kulish were rehabilitated at that time. And in 1961, Taniuk began staging one of Mykola Kulish's last plays, Maklena Hrasa. The premiere took place on 23 January 1962 at the October Palace. Later, it was planned to stage Mykola Kulish's ‘Pathetic Sonata’ in the design of Alla Horska and Olena Kyrychenko. The work was started and brought to the stage of preparing sketches of the scenography and rehearsals.
The staging of contemporary works was also extremely important in the New Theatre's activities. Taniuk planned to stage Ivan Drach's Knife in the Sun, Mykhailo Stelmakh's Truth and Wrong, Mother Courage, Bertolt Brecht's Life of Galileo, and Imre Madád's The Tragedy of Man.
The artists began working on Mykola Kulish's play Thus Died the Goose in Kyiv in the second half of 1962, but the main activity took place in early 1963 and was largely carried out at the Lviv Drama Theatre named after M. Zankovetska, with the support of the chief director Serhiy Smiyan.
After watching six excerpts performed by costumed actors in Kyiv, he suggested that the play be staged in the Lviv theatre. To develop new approaches to the design of the play and costumes, the artist drew on the achievements of the Ukrainian theatre avant-garde. This is evidenced by the sketches of the set design for the three acts of the play. Despite the fact that the play was filmed on 7 April 1963, its premiere can be considered the dress rehearsal that took place on 3 April 1963, as it was held in front of a room full of students, with the full deployment of the set design and costumes.
After the banning of the play ‘So Died the Goose,’ Taniuk and Horska went to Odesa to try to continue their work at the Ukrainian Music and Drama Theatre named after the October Revolution (now the Odesa Academic Ukrainian Music and Drama Theatre named after V. Vasylko), where they hoped to stage other plays. First of all, Mykhailo Stelmakh's play Truth and Falsehood was being prepared for staging.
The theatrical experience of 1961-1963 became an extremely important springboard for the artist into monumental art. In 1964, together with Opanas Zalyvakha, Liudmyla Semykina, Halyna Sevruk, and Halyna Zubchenko, Horska created the stained-glass window ‘Shevchenko. Mother’.
On the eve of the opening, the stained-glass window was destroyed by the university administration on the instructions of the party leadership. The commission convened afterwards qualified it as ideologically hostile, deeply alien to the principles of socialist realism. Horska and Semykina were expelled from the Artists' Union, though they were reinstated a year later.
Alla Horska reacted sharply to a series of arrests of Ukrainian intellectuals in 1965 by sending a protest to the prosecutor. She supported the families of political prisoners financially and morally.
Horska was repeatedly summoned to the KGB for interrogations and ‘preventive conversations’ with warnings and threats. In the end, the artist was physically destroyed. She was found murdered under unclear circumstances on 2 December 1970 in the town of Vasylkiv, where her father-in-law Ivan Zaretskyi lived.
Today, the entire oeuvre of the monumentalist Horska is practically lost, most of her works came under occupation in 2014, and only two mosaics have survived in the territory controlled by Ukraine. In April 1968, she signed the famous letter of protest signed by 139 scientific and cultural figures to the then leaders of the USSR regarding the illegal arrests and closed trials of dissidents.
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2024 - exhibition of works by A. Horska from the collection of Olena Zaretska, Olena and Oleksii Kharkiv in the exhibitions of the project ‘Ukrainian Theatre Costume of the XX-XXI Centuries: Identity, Context, Landscape’ at the gallery of the Dzyga Art Centre (Lviv), Museum of Theatre, Music and Cinema (Kyiv). The project is supported by the UCF and the Ukrainian Institute
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2024 - the first retrospective exhibition of more than 100 works by Alla Horska - ‘Alla Horska. Boriviter’. Kyiv (Ukrainian House, March-April)
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2024 - exhibition ‘Alla Horska. Viktor Zaretskyi’. Donetsk (Art Donbas, March - April)
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2024 - exhibition of works by Alla Horska. Kyiv (National Museum of Literature, August - September)
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2012 - the exhibition ‘And we will raise this red viburnum’, which opened the project ‘Artistic families in the spiritual space of Ukraine’. It featured works by Alla Horska and Viktor Zaretskyi. Kyiv (National Museum of Literature, December-January)
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2010-2011 - exhibition ‘Alla Horska in the circle of the Sixties’. Kyiv (National Museum of Literature, September-October)
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2009 - exhibition of works by Alla Horska and Viktor Zaretskyi. Kyiv (ARTEast gallery, February)
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2003 - exhibition ‘Alla Horska (1929-1970) and Viktor Zaretskyi (1925-1990)’. Kaniv (Tarasova Hora. Taras Shevchenko Museum, October - November)
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2000 - exhibition in memory of Alla Horska ‘Outstanding Artists of Ukraine’. Kyiv (Kyiv City Gallery ‘Lavra’, May - June)
