Saving Ukrainian Art and Helping Artists, One NFT at a Time

Lika Spivakovska closed two art galleries in Kyiv, Ukraine hours after Russia invaded her country, and felt helpless as she and her two children traveled across Europe seeking refuge. Artists stranded in Ukraine had been texting him all week saying that their home ateliers and studios had been destroyed by the attackers.

According to text messages sent to Ms. Spivakovska, explosions in eastern Ukraine damaged about 20 spaces reserved for artists, charred canvases, smashed paintings and lost all livelihoods. “Without a studio, without paint, without canvas, and none of my own work,” one artist wrote.

“I felt so guilty,” said Ms. Spivakovska, 38, who has defended emerging Ukrainian artists for nearly a decade, placing her work in one of the Spivakovska Art:Ego galleries that opened in 2014.

He now believed it was his responsibility to help them throughout the war.

He posted a distress call on Facebook in February, asking if someone could connect him with someone he knew. NFTsor immutable tokens — a type of digital collectible stamped with a unique piece of code that serves as a permanent record of its authenticity.

Many works of artists were destroyed; But maybe, he thought, saved photos of his parts could be turned into NFTs. Maybe this will keep poor Ukrainian painters financially afloat through online auctions as the war drags on.

Eventually, a friend linked Ms. Spivakovska with Crystal Rose Pierce, founder of Lighthouse, an NFT art gallery in Puerto Rico.

“It was four in the morning when I called him and I knew it was something important,” said Ms. Pierce.

He told Ms. Spivakovska that photographs of Ukrainian art and images from paintings and drawings damaged after the Russian attacks could be printed on NFTs and be part of a display at the Lighthouse museum in San Juan.

Ms. Spivakovska, who is also the founder of a celebrity theater and editor-in-chief of ARTNEWS.ONE, an online arts publication, wanted to increase the reach of the show.

Artists and children were still drawing and painting in bomb shelters, often on iPads. Perhaps their work could be sold as NFT, he said, and all the money goes directly to humanitarian efforts in Ukraine or to the children’s artists and families who provided the artwork.

Pierce agreed, and just a day after speaking on the phone, a demonstration in March titled “Lighthouse for Ukraine” raised more than $30,000, and an NFT of the painting was partially damaged by a Russian bomb and sold for about $10,000. Ms. Spivakovska asked people to send her more art so that her nation could write the full cost of the war.

In two weeks, he received more than 450 works of art, most of them digital paintings that Ukrainians had completed in bomb shelters, and placed them on exhibits. Offshorea marketplace where people can buy and sell NFTs. some parts she depicts the dark realities of war, such as bloodied bodies and a nursing mother in a bunker, while others express her joy with yellow and blue flowers. Some also mock Russian President Vladimir Putin and portray him as a horned demon or snake-like creature.

Marianna Gyshchak, 30, from Kiev, one of the artists who contributed to the project, said that the “Fight for Freedom” drawing, which was converted to NFT via WhatsApp on Wednesday, was “a bombshell scream from my heart”. shelter.”

To warm himself in the windowless bunker, he would layer up and put an iPad on his lap, dye the blue and blond hair of the woman holding a silver trident in the center of her piece, resembling Ukraine’s national symbol.

Ms. Spivakovska said that after she was sold, she tried to contact Ms. Gyshchak to share the good news, but could not reach her. Ms. Gyshchak was hiding in Irpin, a suburb of Kiev, which became one of the areas with the most violent conflict in March.

Ms. Spivakovska said she remembers thinking at the time: What if she was killed?

A few days later, he contacted Ms. Gyshchak online. When Ms. Gyshchak was told that someone had bought the “Fight for Freedom”, she told Ms. Spivakovska to donate all the proceeds to the Ukrainian army.

“They are saving our lives and I am happy that my talent and art can help them,” he said. “It’s the least I can do.”

Pierce of Lighthouse NFT gallery said the gallery is planning another Ukrainian NFT art show in May and all the money from the sales will go to artists or humanitarian aid.

“What happened is that art has been flooded from the country where we can now do something bigger,” he said.

Some of the pictures are of children who have been sleeping in bomb shelters for weeks and spend part of their days drawing on paper or electronic tablets.

The one piece, belonging to a 7-year-old boy, shows a sinuous bright rainbow surrounded by bombs drawn in scattered squiggles. Another is from a 3-year-old girl whose grandmother died during the war. Miss Pierce said the drawing was a memory of him.

The President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky recently spoke About the power of art in a video addressing artists and cultural leaders at the Venice Biennale in Italy.

“Art can tell the world things that cannot be shared otherwise,” he said.

Ms. Spivakovska agreed and said she was hopeful that one day she could return to her galleries in Kiev.

He said that for two months life has been uncontrollable for Ukrainians. And for artists, “the only thing they can control is their talent,” he added.