Vasyl Yermilov - Kharkiv Master of the "Age of Great Fermentation"...

Life | 10 March, 2024 at 13:12 | 1,212 | Author: Olena Zelenina

Collage by Olena Zelenina

It is 130 years since the birth of the man who still defines the avant-garde artistic face of Kharkiv. Vasily Dmitrievich Yermilov (1894-1968) was born and died in Kharkiv, where he managed to do so much for contemporary art and design that we are still trying to comprehend it today, returning to his work and marvelling at it.

"The master of the era of great fermentation... It was a great "plywood period" of our painting. All the streets and houses shouted with colours, slogans, flowers, shields and arches of Yermilov's work. It was the pathos of the revolution in colours. There was nothing like it before, and unfortunately, nothing has been inherited. It was a unique style of the era..." - the avant-garde poet Valerian Polishchuk, whose books he illustrated, wrote about him.

In 1925, they founded the Avant-Garde modernist group in Kharkiv, which advocated a programme of constructive dynamism (according to it, art was supposed to glorify modern civilisation and the world of the technical revolution).