Authors of the triptych “Genocide 1933”: We were sure that when we showed the picture to the public, we would not get away with it.

The first of these photos shows the painting “Year 1933” by the Ukrainian emigrant artist Viktor Tsymbal. The canvas, presented in 1936, is considered one of the first paintings on the Holodomor theme.

On the other one is a part of the triptych “Genocide 1933” by Kyiv artists Taras and Yurii Honcharenko. The triptych was created in 1989 and is considered one of the first in Ukraine dedicated to the tragedy of 1932-1933. Despite the similarity in the symbolic reproduction of the Holodomor genocide, the Honcharenko brothers had never seen Viktor Tsymbal’s work before creating their painting. After all, everything that was created in the diaspora on the Holodomor theme was inaccessible to artists in Ukraine.

“The idea of creating the painting “Genocide 1933″ arose under the influence of a sketch by my grandfather, the famous artist Volodymyr Ivanovych Bondarenko,” the Honcharenko brothers recall. Volodymyr Bondarenko was Mykhailo Boychuk and Fedir Krychevsky’s student, and when he became a famous artist himself, he taught Alla Horska and Halyna Zubchenko. The life of artists in the Soviet system, especially those who did not want to submit to fate, was very difficult. Volodymyr Bondarenko was no exception and also suffered persecution.”The idea of creating the painting “Genocide 1933″ arose under the influence of a sketch by my grandfather, the famous artist Volodymyr Ivanovych Bondarenko,” the Honcharenko brothers recall. Volodymyr Bondarenko was Mykhailo Boychuk and Fedir Krychevsky’s student, and when he became a famous artist himself, he taught Alla Horska and Halyna Zubchenko. The life of artists in the Soviet system, especially those who did not want to submit to fate, was very difficult. Volodymyr Bondarenko was no exception and also suffered persecution. In the last years of his life, he conceived a large-scale canvas about barbarism, in which he wanted to show in a veiled language of art what the Soviets had done to Ukrainian culture, faith, history, and the entire Ukrainian people. He even “drafted” a sketch but did not have time to implement his plan – he died in 1980.

When his grandsons, still very young artists Taras and Yurii Honcharenko, were among the first in Soviet Ukraine to decide to raise the Holodomor theme in art, they took their grandfather’s sketch as a basis. “Nothing was hidden from us in the family. We heard a lot about the Holodomor from our great-grandmother, grandfather’s mother, who was involved in our upbringing. But even then, in the “perestroika” year of 1988, when we started working on the painting, it was, I would say, even dangerous to reproduce this theme in art, – recalls Taras Honcharenko. — We were sure that when we show the picture to the general public, we would not get away with it. But there were no consequences. Times were different after all.”

We remind you that Taras and Yurii Honcharenko’s triptych is currently on display in the Hall of Memory of the Holodomor Museum. Hurry up to see!