Artists’ workshops on the cultural map of Kyiv in the 1960s–1980s

Abstract

The article takes the first step towards a systematic study of the network of art workshops in the city of Kyiv as it developed during the 1960s and 1980s. The artist’s workshop is presented by us as one of the main loci of professional artistic ubiquity, a room where the artist spends a significant part of his life, working and communicating with colleagues. The activities of the Kyiv branch of the Union of Artists of the Ukrainian SSR and the Art Fund of the Ukrainian SSR subordinated to the Union in the field of creating and providing artists with skills are analyzed as one of the directions of the implementation of the Soviet cultural policy: maintaining loyal attitudes in the artistic environment through the material support of artists, ensuring their daily professional needs. The phenomenon of Kyiv research workshops in the interdisciplinary field (using the methods of social history, cultural history, etc.). This made it possible to see the system of workshops as a structure: to typologize, that is, to distinguish different types of premises (residential buildings with workshops, specialized “combinations”, individual premises), to build a chronology of creation and visualize the Kyiv geography of the network of creative workshops.