The Ethnology Notebooks. 2026. № 4 (190), 1165—1174
UDK: 7.036/.038+75.058:665.335]:7.071.1*Глад(443.61)”192/194″
- Received: 03.07.2026
- Accepted: 15.07.2026
- Published: ??.??.2026
SERGE GLADKY: POCHOIR PORTFOLIOS AS A LABORATORY OF DECORATIVE FORM
CHECHYK Valentyna
- ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1083-9590
- Candidate of Art History, Associate Professor,
- Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts,
- Department of Theory and History of Art,
- 8 Mystetstv St., Kharkiv, 61002, Ukraine,
- Contacts: e-mail: valentyna.chechyk@yahoo.com
Abstract. Introduction. The article reconstructs the Parisian period of Serhii (Serge) Gladky’s artistic career through the study of his pochoir portfolios of 1926—1939.
Problem Statement. While the association of Gladky’s work with Art Deco is historically justified, it does not fully account for the plastic logic of his portfolios.
Purpose. The purpose of the article is to examine pochoir as a field of modern form-making in which the ornamental motif becomes the basis of an independent plastic construction.
Methods. The source base includes the artist’s albums, prefaces to the editions, materials from the French and Lviv interwar press, catalogues, bibliographic and reference sources. The methodology combines formal analysis of composition with historical and cultural correlation of sources and reconstruction of the artistic context.
Results. The study demonstrates that floral, animal, ornamental, emblematic, and theatrical motifs are reinterpreted through geometrised forms informed by Cubist experience, rhythm, colour planes, and architectural thinking. The article reveals the importance of Gladky’s architectural education and theatrical milieu for his compositional thinking; attention is also paid to the theatrical dimension of his work and to his editorial activity in the journal UměníSlovanů. The late album Ukrainski vzirtsi. Slovianska seriia (1939) is analysed as a work in which the Ukrainian dimension emerges through references to folk art, emblems, and historical motifs.
Conclusion. Gladky emerges as an artist of the broader European milieu whose decorative language developed at the intersection of Art Deco, Cubist geometrisation, architectural thinking, colour planes, and Ukrainian cultural material. The article refines his place within twentieth-century Ukrainian art and situates his pochoir portfolios within modern decorative art in interwar Europe.
Keywords: Serge Gladky, twentieth-century Ukrainian art, graphic art, decorative art, pochoir, ornamental motif, Art Deco, Cubism, modernism, Paris, interwar period.
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