On November 25, 2022, the presentation of the exhibition "ARTshelter for artists" took place in the O.O.Osmerkin Art Memorial Museum. This is already the second exhibition within the museum art project "Art Studios-2022" on the topic: "Portraits of contemporaries against the background of war". The exposition is dedicated to the memory of painting professor Oleksandr Osmerkin on the occasion of his 130th birthday (December 8), Honored Artist of Ukraine Andrii Nadiezhdin, who suddenly passed away on October 19 this year, and Ukrainian soldiers who gave their lives defending freedom , independence and territorial integrity of our country.
    Implementing the "Art Studios" project on a theme determined by life itself, the museum actually became a kind of art shelter for artists, where they work creatively and give birth to new ideas, communicate and warm each other's souls in difficult times of superhuman trials. The chief curator of this project was Andrii Nadezhdin, a leading researcher of the museum, a professional art critic, and an honored artist of Ukraine. and figuratively reflect them, suppressing one's own thoughts and feelings, full of doubts and at the same time confidence in the victory of light and good. Therefore, it is his graphic work "War" from the "Chronicles of the New Middle Ages" series, created on March 29, 2022, that is reproduced on the poster of the exhibition.
    The exposition of the exhibition, located in the basement of the museum, which is currently used as a shelter during an air raid, consists of more than fifty works of the participants of the art project "Art Studios-2022" - artists from Kropyvnytskyi Andrii Nadiezhdin, Olha Krasnopolska, Iryna Kukharenko, Nataliia Kornilova, Oleksandr Kyrianov, Liudmyla and Oleksandr Demydenko, Olha Kolomiets, Yuliia Tarasova, photographer Oleksandr Shuleshko and artists from other cities, Anna Baranova from Kharkiv and Hryhorii Vovk from Odesa.
    Attractive highlights of the exhibition are installations of memorial items from the Pauchenko-Osmerkin house, because the museum itself is under cover, because the exposition was dismantled in order to preserve paintings and other rare items. Emotional tension is created by constructions from podiums, various lighting, a video series of animated author images, musical accompaniment and symbols of today - the Flag of Ukraine, the "Borodianskyi Cockerel", a shell casing, a military cap and a woman's headscarf in anticipation of meeting the winner. Gradually, everyone - both artists and spectators, plunging into the world of images, feeling the instability of time and space, become participants in the exhibition, artistic action - performance.
    This is exactly the kind of performance that took place during the vernissage with the lights turned off again. But this sadness did not stop the visitors, because everyone was armed with flashlights, and on the contrary, it made them even more interested in contemplating the creative works made by artists since the beginning of the war, in which pain and despair, misunderstanding and fear, anger and thirst for revenge, compassion and the desire to help, and most importantly, faith in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and confidence in our Victory.
    The performance of the talented Kropivnytskyi artist Olha Krasnopolska was sincere. As the curator of the exhibition, because it was she who had the idea of its arrangement, she spoke about what the Oleksandr Osmerkin museum became for her personally during the war, about a kind of emotional recovery during art studies. It was supplemented by other artists - Nataliya Kornilova, Iryna Kukharenko, Olha Kolomiets and Lyudmyla Demydenko, noting that it was the museum art project of creating portraits of contemporaries against the background of the war that returned them to creativity, which means to a full life.
    Thus, Liudmyla Demydenko drew attention to the two images of a museum object presented in the exposition of the exhibition - an ancient grand piano, which was left alone in the memorial hall after the dismantling of the exposition. And if the black-and-white photo of Oleksandr Shuleshko, which captured the artist and art critic Andrii Nadiezhdin in a moment of contemplation at the piano in the empty hall of the museum, where he fruitfully worked for almost three decades as a leading researcher, impresses with the awareness of the horror that befell us all, the helplessness before the uncertainty. By the way, this picture was taken on March 21, the birthday of the famous architect Yakov Pauchenko. Usually, during peacetime, this day, celebrations on the occasion of the awarding of the regional award in the field of architecture, heraldry and vexillology and decorative and applied arts named after Yakov Pauchenkov were traditionally held in his own house, where the museum is now located. And this year it was empty and quiet. And only the ticking of the hands of the clock in the lobby of the museum, above which hangs a huge photo portrait of the artist Oleksandr Osmerkin with a brush in his hand, brought me back to reality.
    And the same grand piano, but already in the sunshine, surrounded by the greenery of museum flowers, waiting for paintings and visitors on a painting by Oleksandr Demydenko with the symbolic title "When the day comes, the war will end..." Exhibition hall of the O.O.Osmerkin Memorial Museum. April 2022." Despite the feeling of anxiety in the colorful shades, consonant with the pixel armor of the angels of Nataliia Kornilova's composition "Covering. Peace in our home", the picture literally radiates solid positivity and fills with confidence that Ukraine will be all right.
    Andrii Nadiezhdin's sister, Oksana Zhuravel, came to the opening. Thanking the organizers for the exhibition, for which Andrii Nadiezhdin personally provided his drawings from the "Mysteries of the New Middle Ages" series during his lifetime, she, as an artist and art critic, appreciated the creative approach in building the exhibition and the original presentation of creative works, in particular, format printing of small sizes author's sheets made with a gel pen, focusing on the "Graphic series from a red sketchbook" by Olha Krasnopolska, creative experiments in digital art by her colleague Oleksandr Kyrianov, with whom she once worked at the art school named after O.Osmerkin, and Oleksandr Shuleshko's pictures full of philosophical content.
    Valentina Nozhenko, the Honored Worker of Culture of Ukraine, also congratulated the opening of the exhibition with her colleague - the chief custodian of the Museum of Art's funds.
    The artists and fans of their work talked for a long time, contemplating the exhibition, exchanging tense informational news, thoughts, hopes and remembering those who are no longer with us...