Ukrainian Avangard in the Covers of Vasyl Yermilov

Abstract

Vasyl Yermilov played a significant role in Valerian Polishchuk’s literary and artistic group Avangard, which was part of the Ukrainian artistic avant-garde. A series of covers for publications of the Avangard group, designed by Yermilov in the second half of the 1920s, is highlighted as a turning point in the development of modernism in Ukraine. Yermilov’s design style is characterized by constructivism, a movement that emphasizes geometric forms and rationality, and at the same time is distinguished by unconventional polychromy. The article emphasizes the geometric dominant in Yermilov’s typography and highlights the iconographic triad: a red rectangle, a black circle, and an accented letter. Yermilov’s connection with futurism, felt in his typography, is considered: despite the rejection of serifs in constructivism, their traces can be seen in the unusual plume of the letter “a”. The symbolism of the color red in typography is studied, from the point of view of its association with Soviet ideology and claims to imperial power; the dynamic and abstract qualities of the symbols used by Yermilov are discussed. The typography of the publications of the Avangard group appears as a reflection of the dramatic events in Ukraine at the end of the 1920s, in particular the Red Terror and the attack on the Ukrainian elite. The article analyzes a number of Yermilov covers for the group’s publications from the point of view of composition and symbolism, where the evolution of individual elements is traced. The culmination and transformation takes place in the sketch for the cover of the second issue of the magazine Avangard, where the letter “a” attacks the red rectangle “on the stage” illuminated by the black disk of the eclipse, the inverted sun of the avant-garde, which appeals to the “black sails of time” from V. Khlebnikov’s Manifesto, signed by the Kharkiv bohemians in 1916. The final edition of the third issue of the Kharkiv group’s magazine is perceived as a victory over the red rectangle, but at the cost of the loss of the Logos. The analysis of this typography series represents the changing dynamics and symbolic power of the avant-garde movement in this period, emphasizing the specificity of Ukrainian constructivism in its paradoxical connections with suprematism, visualized in the creative legacy of Vasyl Yermilov.