An Initiative for Art and Research
Researchers
Ada Rybachuk (1931–2010) and Volodymyr Melnychenko (born 1932) are a Ukrainian artist duo who, since 1960s, created reliefs and mosaics for neo-modernist public buildings in Kyiv (such as the Central Bus Station, 1960–1961 and Pioneers Palace, 1963–1969) using neoexpressionist figurative language.
Working closely with architects, they did not merely decorate surfaces, but conceived of the whole building as their sculpture. In 1968, the artists proposed a project for the Kyiv Park of Memory and Crematorium (the building was later solely credited to the architect Avraam Miletsky). Over the next fifteen years, with a small team, the two artists labored by hand on their life’s work, the 213-meter-long Wall of Memory, covered with reliefs depicting various mythological and historical subjects. Although the whole complex was almost complete, in 1982 the reliefs were destroyed by city authorities unsatisfied with their “demoralizing” spirit. Rybachuk and Melnychenko lived and worked in Kyiv, where Rybachuk died in 2010.
