"THE INVINCIBLE" – the first exhibition as part of the art project "Art Studios - 2022" on the theme: "Portraits of contemporaries against the background of war" and dedicated to the Independence Day of Ukraine.
    Due to the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine, millions of Ukrainians found themselves under martial law. But the history of mankind shows that even under such circumstances creative life never stops, because even in the darkest hour there is always a ray of light. Yes, you can fight the enemy with art, which in all its manifestations is an excellent motivation in life.
    During the Second World War, the artist Oleksandr Osmerkin actively worked in the "TARS Windows" Defense Poster Workshop, created a series of portraits of military pilots, designed a theater performance, and painted many paintings. It was this biographical fact of the painter that prompted the scientists of the O.O.Osmerkin Art Memorial Museum to restore the artistic project "Art Studios" and implement it according to the theme determined by life itself: "Portraits of contemporaries on the background of war" on March 31, 2022.
This museum art project has a long history and has already become traditional, because it is a kind of school of fine arts and a platform for communication between professional artists, amateurs and creative youth. This year, it is dedicated to the 130th anniversary of the birth of Oleksandr Osmerkin and was to be held systematically several times a month. So, in February, the event was held twice - at the first "Art Studios", journalist Liliia Kocherha posed as a model in the museum interior, and the second time, artists gathered on February 23 and enthusiastically painted a portrait of psychologist Nina Chapran illuminated by bright sunlight in anticipation of the next on February 24, a creative meeting with the artist - ATO veteran Ihor Popovych. But the meeting never took place, because the war started "tomorrow".
    And although now there is only an old grand piano and chairs in the memorial hall of the museum, because the exhibition was dismantled in order to preserve paintings and other rare objects, these circumstances do not hinder artists, but on the contrary inspire them to creative work behind museum easels.
    The curators of the project are Andrii Nadiezhdin, a leading researcher of the museum, Honored Artist of Ukraine, and Olha Krasnopolska, the head of the fine arts department of the Kropyvnytskyi Children's School of Arts. Studio participants: members of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine Liudmyla and Oleksandr Demydenko, Iryna Kukharenko, Olha Kolomiets and Yurii Vintenko, Oleksandr Kyrianov, the teacher of the Art School named after Oleksandr Osmerkin, artists from Kropivnytskyi Nataliia Kornilova and Yuliia Tarasova, artists from Dnipro Mariia Hrim (Rakhmanova) and Oleksandr Vasylenko, Kyiv artist Oksana Samiilenko and Kropyvnytskyi photographer Oleksandr Shuleshko.
    For the image, the artists choose a new nature every time - their fellow artists, journalists, local experts, employees of museums and other cultural institutions, young people, who are our contemporaries. In June-August, artists with the assistance of the head of the Kirovohrad regional council, Serhii Shulha, created many portraits of volunteers, psychologists, doctors, and also held field trips to the Kirovohrad regional clinical hospital for war veterans, where they painted portraits of combatants. Memorable are the studies with the participation of representatives of the Main Department of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine in the Kirovohrad Region - a firefighter, a pyrotechnician and a psychologist, as well as teachers and cadets of the Donetsk State University of Internal Affairs, which moved from Mariupol to Kropyvnytskyi.
    Museum "Art Studios" is an open art event, which can be joined not only by professional artists, but also by everyone who is interested in visual arts and wants to feel the creative atmosphere that reigns in the house of the architect Yakov Pauchenko, where his nephew spent his childhood and youth in the future painting professor Oleksandr Osmerkin, and where a memorial museum of talented countrymen artists was later created.
    You can read about how art studios were held on the museum website. The exposition consists of more than 250 portraits made by artists in various graphic techniques, which are the result of the creative work of artists during February, 16 and 23 – July, 21 2022.