Tuesday Lecture
Kateryna Ilchenko – The Executed Renaissance

The Executed Renaissance was a generation of Ukrainian writers, artists, and intellectuals of the 1920s–1930s, brutally repressed by the Soviet regime. It was a cultural explosion silenced by terror—voices that could have shaped the world but were erased.

They were murdered for one single desire—to carry and spread the culture and creativity that had emerged in Ukraine long, long ago. For wanting to be free and happy. They must not be forgotten. Because this has not ended. This story repeats itself, century after century, on an ever-worsening scale. What do the voices of lost artists tell us? And what did they not have time to say? By knowing this, we can hear them. They wanted the world to hear them.

Kateryna Ilchenko is a Ukrainian artist with the artist nickname Robert Whale-Lover. She graduated from computer art academy in Kyiv. Before the war she was teaching kids art, illustrating articles and doing different designs.