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Vadym Meller
avant-garde artist, cubist, painter, film artist
Vadym Meller (1884-1962) was born into an aristocratic family. The artist's father, Heorhii Meller, was a Swede, and his mother, Helena Caruso, had Italian-Greek roots. Meller entered the history of Ukrainian art primarily as a constructivist stage designer and one of the organisers of the Berezil Art Association.
The artist received a thorough European education and took an active part in the formation of a new European type of artistic creativity.
Artworks
Biography
EDUCATION
1918 - 1920
1921 - 1925
1926 - 1933
1934 - 1959
EXHIBITIONS
In 1903, the future artist followed his father's example and entered the Law Faculty of St Volodymyr's University in Kyiv. While studying at the university, Meller attended the Kyiv Art School as a free student. In 1905, he studied in Switzerland at the Geneva School of Art. After graduating from Kyiv University (1908), he went to Germany. For several months he studied at the private school of Heinrich Knirr. In 1909, he entered the Munich Academy of Arts, where he studied at the creative workshop of Angelo Jahn. In Munich, Möller became close to the Blue Rider group of expressionist artists. After graduating from the Academy with honours, Møller moved to France in 1912. There he entered the Free Workshops and attended the class of the famous sculptor Antoine Bourdel, a student of Auguste Rodin.
In 1918, Meller returned to Kyiv and became close to the studio of Oleksandra Ekster, which was a creative club and meeting place for artists. Near the studio was Bronislava Nizhynska's School of Movement, which the choreographer opened in 1919. Meller was engaged in the design of choreographic compositions for the School of Movement. Meller's first stage designs were for the performances of ‘Master Patlen’ and ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ at the Oleksii Smirnov Theatre (Kyiv, 1919) and ‘Mazepa’ by Juliusz Slovacki at the Taras Shevchenko State Drama Theatre (Kyiv, 1920).
From 1921 to 1923, Vadym Meller joined the Hnat Mykhailychenko Art Theatre's productions of The Art of Acting, directed by Mark Tereshchenko. Tereshchenko's new artistic method was the introduction of collective creativity: the actor was a free creator who determined his own performance. In 1921, the company staged The Sky Is Burning, based on poems by Oleksa Slisarenko, Mykhailo Semenko, and Geo Shkurupiy. Meller acted not only as an artist but also as a ‘movement leader’.
On 30 March 1922, Vadym Meller co-founded the Berezil Art Association. The artist worked with Les Kurbas until 1933 and became one of the main figures in Berezil.
On the verge of the first and second seasons, a model workshop was created at the Berezil under the direction of the theatre's chief artist Vadym Meller. In the summer of 1923, students of the Kyiv Art Institute joined the workshop: Valentyn Shkliaiev, Maya Symashkevych, Dmytro Vlasiuk, Yevhen Tovbin, Moses Ashkinazi, Mira Panadiadi, and A. Protsenko.
In 1925, Vadym Meller's stage design for the VAB's production of L. Scott's The Trade Union Secretary, directed by Borys Tyahan, won a gold medal at the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Paris. Meller was invited to participate in the International Theatre Exhibition in New York.
In 1926, Berezil was moved to Kharkiv, the capital of Ukraine at the time. Meller lived in apartment 56 in Kharkiv's famous Slovo building.
Berezol's programme productions in the stage design by Vadym Meller: ‘Gas by G. Kaiser, directed by L. Kurbas (1923), Jimmy Higgins by E. Sinclair, directed by L. Kurbas (1923), Macbeth by W. Shakespeare, directed by L. Kurbas (1924), The Golden Belly by F. Krommelink, directed by L. Kurbas (1926). Kurbas (1926), Mikado by A. Sullivan, directed by V. Inkizhynov (1927), The People's Malachi by M. Kulish, directed by L. Kurbas (1928), Hello, on Wave 477! by Mykola Kulish, directed by L. Kurbas (1929), Dictatorship by I. Mykytenko, directed by L. Kurbas (1930), The Host by I. Karpenko-Kary, directed by V. Skliarenko (1932), Maclena Gracа by Mykola Kulish, directed by L. Kurbas (1933).
After Les Kurbas was removed from his duties as artistic director of the Berezil Theatre, the theatre was reorganised. The artist's work shifted to more realistic means of expression. In 1948, Meller became the chief artist of the Kyiv Theatre of Musical Comedy, and in 1953-1959, he was the chief artist of the Ivan Franko Theatre in Kyiv. At the same time, he was engaged in easel painting (a significant part of his previous work was destroyed during the war), book graphics.
In 2004, the National Art Museum of Ukraine and the Museum of Theatre, Music and Cinema of Ukraine, on the initiative and with the active participation of Brigitta Vetrova, the artist's daughter, opened an exhibition of Vadym Meller's works ‘Adventures of the Avant-Garde’. In 2009, the Museum of Theatre, Music and Cinema of Ukraine hosted an exhibition dedicated to the artist's 125th birthday based on the works in the museum's collection.
Vadym Meller's works from the collection of the Museum of Theatre, Music and Cinema of Ukraine are regularly exhibited in international and Ukrainian exhibition projects:
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2024 - exhibition of Vadym Meller's works at the exhibition of the project ‘Ukrainian Theatre Costume of the XX-XXI Centuries: Identity, Context, Landscape’ at the Museum of Theatre, Music and Cinema (Kyiv). The project is supported by the UCF and the Ukrainian Institute
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2024 - ‘At the epicentre of the storm. Modernism in Ukraine’. Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK
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2024 - ‘At the epicentre of the storm. Modernism in Ukraine’. Austrian Belvedere Gallery, Vienna, Austria
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2024 - ‘Futuromania: Ukraine and the Avant-Garde’ at FeliX Art & Eco Museum. Drogenbosch, Belgium
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2023 - 2024 - ‘At the epicentre of the storm: Modernism in Ukraine 1900-1930s’. Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, Belgium
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2023 - ‘Modernism in Ukraine. 1900 - 1930’. Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany
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2023 - ‘Futuromania: Ukraine and the Avant-Garde’ at the KUMU Art Museum. Tallinn, Estonia. 2023
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2022 - 2023 - ‘In the Epicentre of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine in the 1900s and 1930s’. National Museum of Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, Spain
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2021 - Futuromania. Mystetskyi Arsenal in Kyiv, Ukraine
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2018 - ‘Eccentricity and Expression. Ukrainian avant-garde scenography’ at the Museum of Theatre, Music and Cinema of Ukraine. Kyiv, Ukraine
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2015 - ‘Staging the Ukrainian Avant-Garde of 1910-1920’ Ukrainian Museum in New York, USA
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2013 - ‘Great and majestic’. Art Arsenal in Kyiv, Ukraine
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1995 - ‘Ukrainian Stage Avant-Garde of the 1920s and 1930s’. Cardiff, UK
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1990 - 1991 ‘Ukrainian Avant-Garde of the 1920s and 1930s’. Museum of Modern Art in Zagreb, Yugoslavia (Croatia).
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1990 - ‘Scenography of Ukraine in the 1960s - 1980s’. Mexico City, Mexico
