DISAPPEARED NAMES OF OSMU: TOWARD THE CREATIVE BIOGRAPHY OF MELANIA TKACHENKO

Abstract

The aim of this study is to reconstruct the artistic biography of Melania Tkachenko and to clarify the problem of her authorial attribution within the context of the Ukrainian artistic process of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Particular attention is paid to the comparison of exhibition, critical, museum, and archival records of her name in order to trace the mechanisms through which the artist’s identity was formed and fixed within different institutional environments. The research is based on a comparative analysis of exhibition catalogues from 1927–1935, art periodicals of the late 1920s–early 1930s, museum documentation, and archival descriptions, applying arthistorical, source-critical, and attributional approaches. The results demonstrate Melania Tkachenko’s active participation in the exhibition life of the period and her integration into contemporary critical discourse. The study shows that exhibition and critical sources consistently identified the artist without contradictions in personal attribution, while discrepancies emerged at the stage of museum cataloguing, where the requirement for full personal identification altered the mode of recording authorship. Archival materials have made it possible to уточнити the artist’s full name – Melania Ivanivna Tkachenko – and to explain the variability of attribution found in the documentary corpus. The conclusions argue that the case of Melania Tkachenko represents not a disappearance of an artist but an example of artistic existence across different regimes of documentary memory. The reconstruction of her exhibition activity and the analysis of institutional attribution practices reveal mechanisms of preservation, displacement, and transformation of artistic memory within the cultural space of the twentieth century and outline perspectives for further archival research.