The original title for Aka Pereyma’s show at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art was “The Egg Came First,” and she did learn the traditional Ukrainian art of Easter egg decoration from her mother. There’s only one basket of these eggs, Pysanky, on display, but eggs are frequently represented in this exhibit of 110 paintings, drawings, sculptures, ceramics, and textiles. All of Pereyma’s work grows out of her Ukrainian background even though it looks as much like high modernism as folk art, ranging from delicate abstracted drawings to paintings full of sturdy, forceful forms.
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Born in Poland in 1927 to Ukrainian parents, Pereyma had a chaotic youth. Her father, a Ukrainian nationalist, moved the family to Germany when the Russians seemed likely to advance into Poland. They lived in a work camp, where they sometimes came close to starving. But for Ukrainians living in Germany, she says, the aftermath of the war was “like a flower burst out of the earth–there was embroidery, singing, poetry, theater.” As a pharmacy student in Erlangen, following her father’s wishes, she met her husband, who became a surgeon. They married and came to the United States in 1949, and a few years later she began to study art. “God bless America for the freedom to prove yourself,” she says.
The earliest works in this exhibit are from the mid-60s. After the Bath (1964) is based on Pereyma’s own figure. “I thought I was becoming pretty gutsy to put such a big woman naked in one of my works. I was embarrassed, but I did it.” Part of it is scorched–damaged in a 1968 fire that destroyed much of her work. Thirty years after hearing Dylan Thomas read his poetry on the radio (“I couldn’t understand what it was all about, but the way he delivered it was so captivating”), she began making drawings that represent poems as pure design. In the five examples here from the series “Homage to Poets” (made between 1993 and 2005), she replaces each letter of a Polish or Ukrainian poem with an asterisk.
When: Through May 22
