Ukrainian heritage celebrated in show at Museum of Russian Art

As a child of immigrants, Minneapolis painter Leon Hushcha has no memories of his parents' homeland in the Ukraine, or the displaced persons camp in Austria where he was born 70 years ago, when much of Europe was still in ruins from World War II.

What he remembers is the immigrant creed of hard work, patriotism, gratitude and respect that sustained his family though the lean years after they arrived in Minnesota in 1950.

"I couldn't stand the thought of hurting my father and mother, because it meant so much to them to be Americans," Hushcha said recently.

For artist Olexa Bulavitsky, who was born a century ago in the Ukraine and died 15 years ago in Minneapolis, the lure of the Old Country was palpable. He and his family also came to Minnesota in 1950. In the new land he developed a modest but successful career, teaching and exhibiting in the Twin Cities and clinging to his heritage in Impressionistic images he painted of the pitched-roof cottages, barns and churches in old Ukrainian settlements in the Canadian province of Manitoba.

Hushcha's 20th-century modernist style owes more to Picasso's elegant line and Matisse's vibrant colors than to the 19th-century manner that Bulavitsky learned at art school in Leningrad. But the two painters' vigorous images offer a cultural counterpoint that the Museum of Russian Art is celebrating in a brief "pop-up" show that opens Wednesday and closes Sunday.

"Because both have lived in Minneapolis it turns into a very interesting conversation," said Vladimir von Tsurikov, the museum's director. "They knew each other and exhibited together in the Ukrainian Community Center decades ago so it's a retrospective meeting between them."

A show of Ukrainian art in a Russian museum may seem unusual, given the contentious history of the two nations.

"As a cultural institution we try to stay out of the political dialogue because we believe that art has the power to bring people together," said Tsurikov. "Considering how much importance immigrants and refugees play in the ethnic makeup of the Twin Cities, this is a very significant topic. It's a testimony to the openness and acceptance of people here, who gave new hope and homes to immigrants and refugees.

"Just as there is religious and political freedom, there is artistic freedom at play here."

The museum already had a Bulavitsky show hanging when Tsurikov first met Hushcha this spring. After discovering the biographical coincidences, he arranged to retain about half of Bulavitsky's work for a week after that exhibit ended July 3.

In this week's show, Bulavitsky's paintings will surround Hushcha's lyrical images of elegant women, stylized birds, windblown horses and colorful, almost folkloric designs.

"A lot of the ornamental designs around the borders of Leon's work are representative of Ukrainian decorative traditions, and certain images of nature are reminiscent of folk art," Tsurikov said.

The 'freak' of the family

Life was Spartan for the Hushcha family in the early 1950s. Leon's father worked as a railroad switchman and the family of five — parents, grandfather, older brother Michael and Leon — shared one room in a house on St. Paul's Wabasha Street, "which was a slum area," he recalled. A third son, Tony, was born later.

"Like many immigrants, my parents wanted me to be a doctor or lawyer," Leon said. "But I seemed to be a freak of some sort. Nobody in the family did sports or art but I was drawn to both very strongly."

At St. Paul's Humboldt High he played football, basketball, ran track "and loved it all." A jock who took art classes "wasn't so acceptable" then, but Hushcha persevered, his natural talent for drawing having attracted attention even in grade school.

As it turned out, football later changed his life. After graduating in 1968 from what is now the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, he was drafted into the Army at the height of the Vietnam War. At his physical, a doctor found that football injuries had damaged both knees.

"You'll never make it through boot camp," he told Hushcha, who added, "I was so happy."

His older brother did serve in Vietnam, and survived, but the war brought strains.

"My father being an immigrant, even though you might want to run away to Canada, you can't because you feel obligated and know what your duty is," Leon said.

A little fish in New York

After earning an MFA from the University of Minnesota in 1971, he headed for New York, where Pop Art was being invented in a then-derelict industrial neighborhood called SoHo. Fame beckoned big-time for Hushcha, Joe Zucker, Chuck Close and other art pals of the time.

But as his friends consolidated their New York reputations, Hushcha detoured. On a visit home, he was hit by a car and spent six months recuperating.

"I realized then that what I wanted wasn't fame or glory in New York, but just to paint for the rest of my life," he said. "I knew I wasn't interested in the flash and dash that, even then, you had to play in the art scene out there. I'm the little fish from Minneapolis, but I chose to be loyal to my community because that's the way I was brought up. That's the easiest way to put it."

For the past 32 years Hushcha has had a cavernous studio-cum-salon in the Thresher Square building near the new Vikings stadium. His wife, Sally Wheaton, is a Minneapolis-based interior designer. He taught at MCAD for a bit, sold his paintings through galleries in Seattle and Scottsdale, Ariz., and developed a roster of private clients whose patronage has enabled him to "live off art."

His love of birds

It was the birds that recently brought Hushcha's immigrant past into focus.

When Leon was about 5 or 6 and his family still crammed into that single room, his father brought home a pigeon with an injured wing and nursed it back to health. The bird bonded with the family and, if Leon were sick, would put her wing over his chest.

Later the bird built a nest on a sill outside their window and hatched a brood of her own, pecking on the glass to show the boy her babies.

When the family moved that summer and had to leave the bird behind, Leon hugged the house and wept.

"After Mother died recently at 92, I remembered that she had this little trick of drawing a bird without lifting her pen off the paper," he recalled. "As a kid I thought that was absolutely marvelous.

"Now, 60 years later, I look at my work and there are all these birds. I wasn't even conscious of it."

Mary Abbe • 612-673-4431

@maryabbe