Avant-garde

The avant-garde (from the French for 'advance guard') is a generalizing name for the radical artistic currents of the first third of the twentieth century (Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Constructivism, Expressionism), united by an orientation toward a decisive break with tradition, formal experiment, épatage, the renewal of the very language of art, and an active social stance. The avant-garde sought not to reflect but to transform the world, to erase the boundary between art and life. In Ukrainian culture the avant-garde gave a vivid, original phenomenon: in literature — the Futurism of Mykhail Semenko and Constructivist experiments; in theater — the reform of Les Kurbas and the Berezil theater; in painting — Oleksandr Bohomazov, Vasyl Yermilov, and the school of Mykhailo Boichuk. The Ukrainian avant-garde of the 1920s was part of a pan-European process and at the same time distinctly national; most of its creators became victims of the Stalinist repressions of the era of the Executed Renaissance.