Press Release

Embassy of Ukraine to the Holy See and to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta

Presents From October 1 to October 15, 2024

SVITLANA DUDENKO PAINTINGS AND GRAPHICS UKRAINIAN PORCELAIN COLLECTION

Curated by Giuseppe Ussani d’Escobar

Palazzo della Cancelleria Piazza della Cancelleria 1,Rome, Italy

The solo exhibition of Svitlana Dudenko, held under the prestigious patronage and support of the Embassy of Ukraine to the Holy See and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, will open on Tuesday, October 1, at 17:00 in the distinguished setting of the Palazzo della Cancelleria, a jewel of Renaissance architecture in the heart of Rome, just steps from Piazza Navona and Campo de’ Fiori. Conceived by His Excellency Andrii Yurash, Ambassador of Ukraine to the Holy See, organized by Iryna Skab for the Embassy of Ukraine to the Holy See with the significant collaboration of Oleksandr Popov, and curated by art critic and writer Giuseppe Ussani d’Escobar, the exhibition will be open to the public until October 15.

The exhibition features works by the renowned Ukrainian artist Svitlana Dudenko, who collaborated with the celebrated Ukrainian avant-garde artist Borys Kosariev, developing her own distinctive, expressive, and intense style. Dudenko is an architect and designer, an “Honored Artist of Ukraine,” founder and curator of the “Smalta” Art Gallery in Kharkiv, a distinguished professor at the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts, and an Honorary Citizen of Kharkiv, a city tragically devastated by Russian bombardments and attacks. The exhibition showcases postwar Ukrainian porcelain figurines, passionately collected and meticulously studied by Svitlana Dudenko, who has dedicated significant publications and research to Ukrainian porcelain. In this regard, porcelain expert Liudmyla Karpinska- Romaniuk states in the exhibition catalogue: “Fragile, delicate, and refined porcelain might seem ill-suited to represent the realities of life. Yet athletes, playing children, caring parents, carefree bathers, and dancers, brought together, create an extraordinary image of life in a great and beautiful country. It is a mirror of culture and daily life, reflecting the classical canons of art from that period. It was then that porcelain figurines, vivid sculptural representations of ‘reality,’ became a national form and expression of Ukrainian art.”

The exhibition’s curator, Giuseppe Ussani d’Escobar, writes in his essential catalogue essay: “The exhibition we present centers on one woman: the artist Svitlana Dudenko, an expert and collector of porcelain from her homeland, Ukraine. Exodus is a word with a powerful, intense, and violent charge: before us is a woman deprived of her land who, with titanic courage, continues to convey messages of profound meaning and spirituality to the world through her art and her refined collection of porcelain, which tells the vibrant and thrilling story of Ukraine, identified with its rich traditions of sentiment and narrative conveyed through images.” The critic draws a spiritual parallel between Dudenko and Sonia Terk Delaunay (Odessa, 1885-Paris, 1979), writing: “Dudenko’s sequence of ‘Three Moons’ (2024) instinctively and immediately brings me to the Orphic sensibility of Delaunay, who was also Ukrainian. This Orphism was nourished by continuous metamorphosis and the spiritual movement of form, constantly generated and regenerated by halos of light and the interplay of colors, with shades becoming rarefied expressions of the soul, a luminous vision, and a mystical revelation, even linked to a theosophical experience of understanding material that transforms into pure, uncorrupted, and incorruptible light.” Referring to Dudenko’s work Glory to Ukraine (2023), he states it is “a song of hope that aspires to and invokes, in the perfection of the circle, the return to harmony; circles that intersect in a dance moving infinitely in search of the symphony of planets and stars that ceaselessly vibrate above us in the immensity of the Cosmos.”

The exhibition is open from October 2 to October 15, 2024 Palazzo della Cancelleria – Piazza della Cancelleria 1 – Rome Monday to Saturday, 10:00-13:00 and 15:00-18:00; closed on Sundays

For information: Embassy of Ukraine to the Holy See and to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta

+ 390639378800, +393276788826