Dozens of artworks saved from war shifted Ukraine in Berlin

Since Russia Ukraine invaded in 2022, it has been repeatedly bombarded The southern city of Odesareducing many of being historic buildings To ruins. But now, thanks to the work of museum employees, some cultural artifacts of the Black Sea Port City that were evacuated in safety are now shown in Berlin.

Shortly after the invasion, the staff of the age -old Odesa Museum of Western and Eastern art brought many of the most valuable works of art to a storage facility for custody. The following year, employees sent 74 items to Germany, where they were cleaned and restored.

Now most of those pieces can be seen on GemäldegalerieAn art museum in Berlin. The exhibition, entitled “From Odesa to Berlin: European painting from the 16th to the 19th century‘Open at the end of last month.

“Odesa’s beautiful old city, where the museum of Western and Eastern art is located, was attacked time and time again by missiles,” German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier said during the opening of the show, according to the Artificial newspaper‘s Catherine Hickley. “In countless Ukrainian villages and towns, listed buildings are damaged, cultural institutions are destroyed and the artworks are stolen. The attacks on museums, theaters, operas and libraries are intended to eradicate the cultural memory of Ukraine. “

The exhibition contains works from the European Paintings collection of the Odesa Museum, including pieces by the Italian artist Bernardo Strozzi and the Dutch artists French neck And Cornelis de Heem. The paintings came to Germany from a storage facility in LVIV, Ukraine, where “thousands of works of art were piled up in crowded depots,” reports Deutsche Welle‘s Stefan Dege.

Igor Poronyk, director of the Odesa Museum, says Margarete Kreuzer of the German broadcaster Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB) that the storage conditions were ‘not optimal’, according to a translation by Deutsche Welle. Officials feared that the paintings would be destroyed by fungus, so they asked the Berlin museum for help.

At the end of 2023, a truck wore 74 paintings – many of them without frames – to Berlin, according to a statement from the museums of the Berlin state. Two curators cleaned the paintings and placed them in newly cut frames. “From Odesa to Berlin” includes 60 large works of art from the Ukrainian museum in addition to 25 pieces from the collection of the Berlin museum.

The Collaborative Exhibition is an ‘important sign of solidarity’, such as Gemäldegalerie Director Dagmar Hirschfelder tells RBB. “Cultural assets, Ukrainian cultural assets, are actively destroyed and destroyed. And making a contribution here is very important to us. “

The exhibition is divided into nine chapters that emphasize different genres of European painting, which reflect the “versatile nature of the Ukrainian collection, which has so far known little known in Western Europe,” according to the statement.

“I hope that this exhibition will be seen by many people from Germany, Europe and the whole world,” said Steinmeier at the opening. “I hope that Ukrainians who have found refuge here in Germany will find a bit at home in the paintings.” The most important thing is that the president has added to it, he hopes that the paintings will be returned to the Odesa Museum in a ‘free and independent Ukraine’.

“It gives us hope when people come to the museum and see that paper and canvas have lasted so many years and have experienced so much,” Poronyk tells RBB. “Evil is fleeting, but the art lasts forever.”

‘From Odesa to Berlin: European painting from the 16th to the 19th century” can be seen in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin until June 22, 2025.