From April 25 to May 20, the Dukat Art Foundation presents an exhibition dedicated to one of the most ambitious projects by Ukrainian monumental artist Ivan Lytovchenko—the artistic design of the city of Pripyat, built in 1970. The artist worked on realizing his vision—from mosaic reliefs and sculptures in the city center to tapestries for public interiors—between 1974 and 1982, serving as the chief artist of this new city for “new people.”
In the works that adorned numerous urban structures, the artist embodied the ideas of scientific and technological achievements of the era of the “peaceful atom,” intertwined with a vision of nature in an age of progress. Each monumental piece by Ivan Lytovchenko demonstrates innovative approaches, both in visual language and technical execution: the artist combines metal and smalt, developing his own formula of image-making in which dynamics and rhythm articulate meaning and reveal the powerful creative energy that set him apart from other monumentalists.
Today, Pripyat has become a ghost town—a symbol of a major technological disaster: the Chernobyl nuclear accident of April 26, 1986. After the catastrophe, part of Lytovchenko’s works was lost. The surviving mosaic reliefs, impossible to dismantle due to radioactive contamination, have deteriorated yet endured, becoming silent witnesses to another tragedy that struck Ukraine in February 2022—the full-scale invasion by Russian forces.
The exhibition at the Dukat Art Foundation presents sketches of both realized and unrealized monumental works for Pripyat, as well as photographs of the surviving mosaic reliefs by Ivan Lytovchenko, taken in the 2010s by Kyiv-based photographer Yevhen Nikiforov.
Ivan Lytovchenko (1921–1996) was a prominent representative of Ukrainian monumental art of the second half of the 20th century, known for his innovative visual language in mosaics, reliefs, and architectural decoration. He was born on July 8, 1921, in the village of Buhruvate (now Okhtyrka district, Sumy region). He studied at the Lviv State Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts, where his teachers included Roman Selsky and Witold Manastyrskyi—figures who influenced a generation of artists that later contributed to the development of Lviv’s unofficial art scene. A significant part of his artistic legacy is located in Kyiv. Among his notable works are mosaics at the Bolshevik metro station (now Shuliavska, Kyiv), mosaic panels at the Kyiv River Port (in collaboration with Ernest Kotkov and Valerii Lamakh), and mosaics along Peremohy Avenue (now Beresteiskyi Avenue) in Kyiv (in collaboration with Volodymyr Prydka). From 1974 to 1982, he worked on the monumental-plastic ensemble “Pripyat” (Pripyat, Kyiv region, now part of the Exclusion Zone).