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Yevhen Kotlyar

Corresponding Member of the NAA of Ukraine

Illustration

Yevhen Kotlyar

    born in 1970

Monumentalist Artist, Designer, Art Historian, Curator, Educator

    Corresponding Member of the NAA of Ukraine (2025)

    Member of the Ukrainian Designers’ Union (2002)

     Member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine (2005)

    Member of the Ukrainian Association of Judaica (2017)

    Member of the International Association of Art Critics (2018)

    Member of the European Association of Judaica (2023)

    Recepient of the Tetiana Yablonska Prize of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine (2025)

    PhD in Art Studies (2001)

    Professor (2020)

Yevhen Kotlyar was born in Kharkiv, where he studied as a monumental artist (1995) and later earned his postgraduate (1998) and doctoral (2013) degrees in art history from the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts (KSADA).
He combines teaching with creative work in monumental art, design, and photography, as well as curatorial, scholarly, editorial, and public activities. As an academic organizer, he has served as curator of KSADA’s Center for Oriental Studies, academic secretary of the specialized academic council for defending PhD theses in art history, editor-in-chief of the scholarly journal Visnyk of the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts and HUDPROM: Ukrainian Journal of Art and Design, and a member of the editorial boards of several Ukrainian and international academic publications. For many years, he has curated original projects that promote young artists. Initiatives such as The Jewish Atlantis, Self-Portrait with an Apple: Self-Presentation of a Myth, and Happiness in a Square, supported by Ukrainian and international grants, have gained recognition in Ukraine and abroad through traveling exhibitions that merge artistic practice with multimedia technologies.
At the same time, Yevgen Kotlyar's main area of creative and scientific interest is related to Jewish art, particularly in Ukraine. This includes historiography, synagogue architecture and synagogue paintings, traditional artistic culture, Kharkiv Jewish local history, museum studies, and the creation of a contemporary visual Jewish space. In his multifaceted work, the artist seeks to explore, revive, present, and popularize Jewish culture in a wide visual variety of tradition and modernity, giving voice to the destroyed generation of Ukrainian art historians of the 1920s and 1930s who researched Jewish monuments. The main emphasis is on finding appropriate visual forms in the form of art projects, exhibitions, scientific and artistic publications, etc. to represent his numerous scientific research.
His diploma project — a series of stained-glass windows Jewish Holidays for the Choral Synagogue in Kharkiv and his PhD thesis Synagogues of Ukraine from the Second Half of the 16th to the Early 20th Century as a Historical and Cultural Phenomenon, along with years of archival research, numerous lectures, and publications ranging from scholarly articles to the guidebook Jewish Kharkiv (2011, winner of a municipal award), provided him with invaluable artistic and scholarly-publishing experience. This was further enriched by realized creative projects, including the design of Jewish cultural centers, the Kharkiv Holocaust Museum, and later the Pain and Hope Museum in a Jewish school, as well as the interactive museum space of the Holocaust Victims’ Memorial at Drobytskyi Yar. His stained-glass windows for the Kyiv Podil Synagogue (2003) and the Halytska Synagogue in Kyiv (2005) became the first examples of stained-glass art in Ukrainian synagogues. His photographic exhibition Ukrainian Shtetl (2024) marked the culmination of many years of travels through former Jewish towns in Ukraine, aiming to reveal these nostalgic landscapes of Yiddishland to the contemporary generation.
In his scholarly output, Yevhen Kotlyar has authored over 230 monographic works and academic publications, released in Ukraine, Moldova, Poland, Israel, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Slovenia, Germany, Austria, Italy, and other countries. He has participated in nearly 150 academic events across Europe, Israel, the United States, and Canada. Notable among his publications are: Jewish Kharkiv: A Guide to its History, Culture, and Sites of Memory (Kharkiv, 2011); exhibition catalogues "Jewish Atlantis": The World of the Shtetl in the Works of Kharkiv Artists (Kharkiv, 2012); How Lovely Are Your Tents, O Jacob…; Wall Paintings of the Synagogues of Bukovina (Kyiv–Chernivtsi, 2016); The Light of Revival: Stained-Glass Windows for the Restored Synagogues of Ukraine (New York, 2023); and Ukrainian Shtetl: Return to a Place of Power; Photographic Journeys through Former Jewish Towns (New York, 2024). During the war, in collaboration with the Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies, where he chairs the Academic Council, Kotlyar organized Ukraine’s first international conference dedicated to Jewish artistic heritage Expanding Borders: The Jewish Artistic Heritage of Ukraine (Chernivtsi, 2024), bringing together leading scholars of Jewish art from ten countries.
Recognition of his creative achievements includes election to numerous professional Ukrainian and international unions and associations, as well as multiple awards and honors, among them: the Distinction of the Presidium of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine (2025); the Annual Prize of the Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for an outstanding contribution to the study of Jewish art (2022); a Certificate of Merit from the Kharkiv Regional Council (2021); a Letter of Appreciation from the Mayor of Kharkiv (2011); and commemorative medals for his role in the reconstruction of the Kharkiv Choral Synagogue and the Great Synagogue of Kyiv (both 2003).

Selected lectures and artist’s presentations:


— “On Judaica and Beyond.” Online meeting with Yevhen Kotlyar as part of the series “Creative Encounters in Times of War.” Organized by the T. H. Shevchenko “Ukrainica” Department, V. G. Korolenko Kharkiv State Scientific Library, July 10, 2025.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3yCIeHTjuA

— Yevhen Kotlyar in the project “LYUDY-YE (people exist)” (“SUSPILNE”), 2021.

https://youtu.be/kD3g_Sm6G4Q

— Award ceremony for the Bezalel, Mordechai and Nessa Narkiss Prize of the Center for Jewish Art, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel), for outstanding contribution to the study of Jewish art, December 22, 2022

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3djMM_Bf0v8&t=7s

— Lecture at the opening of the solo exhibition “The Light of the Revival. Stained-Glass Designs for Restituted Synagogues in Ukraine,” New York, September 10, 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ3SLNK08_Y&t=2s

— Lecture at the opening of the solo exhibition “The Ukrainian Shtetl. Homecoming to Places of Strength. Photographic Travels in Former Jewish Localities,” New York, September 10, 2023.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SlahQTVclY

— Presentation “Marked World: Visual Contemplating of Former Yiddishland” at the international symposium “Yiddish in Public Space: The Art of Language,” Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel, April 21, 2025.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqDjNwq_5Bc

Illustration

Location20 Bulvarno-Kudryavska street Kyiv city, 01054

Phone+38 044 486 33 69+38 044 486 2460

E-mailmoc.liamg%40aimedaca.uman


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Illustration

Location20 Bulvarno-Kudryavska street Kyiv city, 01054

Phone+38 044 486 33 69+38 044 486 2460

E-mailmoc.liamg%40aimedaca.uman


Subscribe to the newsletter of the NAA of Ukraine:

Thank you for subscribing

to our regular newsletter!

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Developed by NS Advisory

All rights reserved