Creative links between museum workers and artists of Kharkiv and Lviv have a good history of relations. These are exhibition projects, Plein airs, scientific and practical conferences, exchange of art history literature. Among the most active creative "links" between our cities is Yuriy Yamash from Lviv, a participant in Plein-air exhibitions in the Kharkiv region, and the author of scientific and artistic studies about I. Trush, H. Semiradskyi, and others, well known in Kharkiv Art Museum, Professor Volodymyr Prusak, who currently works at the Design Department of UNFU. Experienced designers and digital artists, the graphic design teachers showed their professional performance and public attitude to the events taking place in Ukraine with their works, also involving their students in poster art as a powerful means of resistance to Russian aggression.
Nowadays, graphics, especially its computer version, is gaining popularity again, due to the events in Ukraine caused by Russian aggression. It returns the sharpness of the reaction, and the dynamics of the transmission of events, as a mobile and topical genre. The exhibition of the anti-war poster by Y. Yamash and the UNFU students is a kind of artistic diary of the war, starting in 2014, the annexation of Crimea and the occupation of part of Donbas.
The works are different in figurative and stylistic performance, compositional structure, and metaphorical, semantic, and symbolic content. The military component, embodied in the daily victorious work of our Armed Forces (and war, according to the words of one of the literary characters, is the most difficult work in the world), is combined with the lyrical-epic image of the Motherland, full of various emotional moods, where faith and hope for victory still prevail. The authors of the posters pay special attention to the state symbols of Ukraine, affirming the inviolability of its territorial integrity and borders. In some posters, the authors "include" telling pictorial quotations - the sculpture of David by Michelangelo holds a monolithic block with the outline of Ukraine, the Zaporozhian Cossacks mercilessly repulse the enemies, a shamrock breaks through the earth's crust as a symbol of an unconquered nation and its immortal people. The traditions of political satire and grotesque-caricature depiction of the enemy are embodied in many posters. "Russian peace" is insidious "matryoshka dolls" with a cruel filling, "potato beetles" that brazenly climb onto our fields and land, turning it into a desert, "Peacemaker" in a wreath, where instead of laurels there are bullets, and the expected bread and salt are replaced by"candy" grenades and other ammunition. The poster exhibition of the students and teachers testified not only the personal attitude to the war as the greatest crime against humanity, passed through the soul and heart, but also the creative assimilation of the traditions of national graphics, and its patriotic orientation.
English-language poster titles and appeals introduce these works into the world's political context and contribute to their distribution and popularization. Allusions to the Hutsul martial dance "Arkan", similar to the Zaporizhzhia "Hopak", are evoked by the poster with the image of a fraternal circle of our fighters, armed not only with automatic weapons but also with friendly support and mutual assistance.
