Art Historical Research Centers in Lviv

Transformations of the Post-War Decade (1946-1950s)

Abstract

This article explores the contextual parameters underlying the development of art history as an academic discipline in Soviet Lviv in the mid-twentieth century. One of the key considerations behind the formulation of this problem - “the transformations of the post-war decade (1946–1956)” - is the chronology of the formation and professional activity of many leading Lviv art historians in the second half of the twentieth century, whose publications helped to shape the distinctive canon of Ukrainian art historiography.

The aim of this article is to examine the activities of institutions that continued, revived, or initiated research in the field of art history in post-war Lviv during the 1940s–1950s, viewed through the prism of individual life trajectories and the scholarly achievements of their representatives. Beginning with the figures of Ilarion Svientsitsky, Władysław Podlaha, Mieczysław Gębarowicz, Pavlo Zholtovskyi, Borys Voznytskyi, and Volodymyr Ovsiychuk, and drawing upon documentary sources and historiography, the study seeks to reconstruct the institutional dynamics of change shaped by the ideological imperatives of the post-war Soviet regime.

Methods. The research draws upon historical methods grounded in the concepts of ‘situated knowledges’ and positioning, as well as a network approach, which is particularly suited to studying individual scholars within their professional environments and circles of communication.

Results. Applying the network approach made it possible to trace the dynamics of transformation within both existing and newly established scholarly and museum institutions in Lviv during the post-war period. The study identified the specific features of their “transformations” as they adapted to the ideological objectives of Stalin’s programme for the colonisation of the western territories of Ukraine annexed after 1939, a process reflected in the organisational mechanisms of their academic activity. The article also examines the contributions of key figures engaged in art-historical research in Lviv. In particular, it contextualises selected stages in the scholarly careers of Pavlo Zholtovskyi, Olena Zbronets, and Borys Voznytskyi. The main focus rests on the tension between individual professional choices and the official demands and directives imposed upon art history by the Soviet authorities.

 Conclusions outline the nature of ideological transformations in the museum and academic institutions of postwar Lviv under Soviet control and reveal elements of indirect resistance manifested in the activities of several generations of scholars. At the same time, they highlight several aspects that appear especially promising for further research on the historiography of Ukrainian art within an epistemological paradigm.