Kiev Art Institute


Kiev Art Institute Київський художній інститут, Киевский художественный институт was the Ukrainian state art and technical high school which is the historical inheritor of Ukrainian Academy of Arts which was founded at December 5, 1917 in Kiev by the Central Rada of Ukrainian People's Republic. During the Soviet era, the name of the institution changed several times. Kiev Art Institute appeared as a result of reorganization and merger of Institute of Plastic Arts and Ukrainian Institute of Architecture. In 1925 KHI got a new building of former Kiev Theological Seminary this helped to open new departments: film and photography, printing, sculpture and pedagogical.
The development the KHI was facilitated by the activity of rector Ivan Vrona, who was updating it's pedagogical staff in 1924-1930. He invited famous avant-garde artists such as Kazimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin, Victor Palmov, Pavel Golubyatnikov, and turned Kiev Art Institute into one of the most progressive higher education institutions in Europe in the 1920s along with the Bauhaus.
In addition, at the KHI already had been teaching: Mykhailo Boychuk, Alexander Bogomazov, Fedir Krychevsky, Vadym Meller, Sophiya Nalepinska-Boychuk, Leo Kramarenko, Vasyl Krichevsky, Andriy Taran.
The Kiev Art Institute played a significant role in maintaining the art avant-garde movement in Ukraine in the 1920s. In 1930 the Institute was reorganized into the Institute of Proletarian Culture in which teaching was conducted only in line with socialist realism.