Illustrations by Maria Kotlyarevska to the Poem by Heinrich Heine Germany. A Winter’s Tale

The main themes of this article are: the artist and the book, the artist and the era, the artist and totalitarianism, the artist and the measure of creative compromise on the example of one, separately taken creative personality. The excellent graphic creativity of Maria Kotlyarevska (one a few survivors of the “Executed Renaissance”) is the pride of Ukrainian fine art of the 20th century. The artist was a representative of the original stylistic direction—the so-called boychukism, which she interpreted in her own manner, using regional features (first of all, of the Kharkiv school). An example of this is her cycle illustrations to the poem Germany. A Winter’s Tale by the classical German poet Heinrich Heine. Of all variety of genre intonations, the artist focuses on critical, reproachful and satirical. That should not surprise our contemporaries: Kotlyarevska’s engravings were created during a difficult period, on the one hand, when Stalinist totalitarianism was on the rise in the URSR, on the other hand, international political situation aggravated, signaling forthcoming Second World War. In this work, as in a crooked mirror, Maria Kotlyarevska reflects the anxiety of her time. It is inevitably marked by certain one-dimensionality, even propaganda ardor. The following Soviet illustrators of Heinrich Heine (Georgiy Echeistov, Lev Brodaty et cetera) gave preference to aesthetic direction but in level of originality do not stand a comparison with Kotlyarevska. Her illustrations are both a document of the terrible era of the 1930s and her (perhaps, subconscious) condemnation. However, the poetic of naturalistic mimesis still wins, despite its pronounced marked neurotic rupture. At the same time, Kotlyarevska in her illustration to the poem Germany. A Winter’s Tale conceived and implemented her understanding of the book as a single, harmonious organism, which was subsequently lost in the following decades.