The Ethnology Notebooks. 2025. № 6 (186), 1486—1498
UDK 75.036.7(477)”19″(092)
CHROMATIC EXPRESSION AND NATIONAL IDENTITY: TOWARDS A RECONSIDERATION OF THE ARTISTIC LANGUAGE OF MYKHAILO MOROZ
MAKOYDA Orest
- ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6915-2481
- Candidate of Sciences in Arts (Ph.D), Head of Department,
- The Institute of Ethnology of the National Academy
- of Sciences of Ukraine,
- Department of Folk Art,
- 15, Svobody Avenue, 79000, Lviv, Ukraine,
- Contacts: e-mail: orestmakoyda@gmail.com
Abstract. Introduction. Among Ukrainian artists of the early twentieth century, one may distinguish a group directly associated with the Expressionist movement, whose creative practices played a decisive role in shaping Expressionist aesthetics and in introducing this Western European artistic style into the Ukrainian cultural context. Alongside them emerged another group of painters who did not formally belong to Expressionist associations, yet whose works nonetheless reveal evident affinities with Expressionist stylistics. This circle includes Oleksa Novakivskyi, Kazymyr Sihulskyi, Osyp Soroktei, Ivan Rubchak, Leopold Levytskyi, and several other original Galician masters. Within this milieu, the émigré painter Mykhailo Moroz occupies a distinctive position. An examination of his oeuvre, together with an identification of the ways in which Expressionist elements permeated his artistic language, enables a more nuanced understanding of the evolution of Expressionism in Ukrainian art.
The purpose of this article is to investigate the cultural and artistic processes associated with the emergence of Expressionism in Galicia at the beginning of the twentieth century. Particular emphasis is placed on the work of Mykhailo Moroz, with the aim of elucidating the Expressionist features that shaped the development of his artistic idiom.
Conclusions. Expressionism did not constitute a passing stage in the creative trajectory of Mykhailo Moroz. Its foundations were laid under the influence of multiple factors, beginning in his Lviv period, especially during his studies at the Oleksa Novakivskyi Art School. It was at that time that the artist first encountered Expressionism, which was gaining increasing visibility within the broader European cultural environ-ment.
In the United States, Moroz created some of his most original and distinctive works, characterized above all by unrestrained expressive intensity. This aesthetic orientation was in close correspondence with the artist’s innate creative temperament. The consolidation of his artistic identity was profoundly shaped by the teaching of Oleksa Novakivskyi, whose painterly foundations provided the basis for Moroz’s subsequent search for an individual stylistic idiom.
Keywords: Mykhailo Moroz; Ukrainian painting; coloristic expression; national identity; artistic language; Expres-sionism.
Received 15.10.2025
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