The first impulses into to the Ukrainian art scene came from St. Petersburg during the 1880s. Further contacts with secession art took place in the internationally active environment of Munich; Oleksandr Murashko, for example, who became one of the pioneers of modern art in Ukraine, worked there. In Central Europe, Vienna was an important centre of secession art, headed by the influential figure of Gustav Klimt, and where Fedir Krychevskyi, Oleksa Novakivskyi and others were active. The environment of Kraków was also significant.
In several centres, secession – the so-called last great international style – was manifested in the context of national specificities. In Ukraine, as in other countries, development of a new national school coincided with the rediscovery of folk art, organisation of applied art workshops in rural areas, and emergent work of artists associated with this environment, such as Hanna Sobachko-Shostak. An important personality was Heorhii Narbut, the artist and designer behind the visual identity for Ukraine – from banknotes to postage stamps.
In addition to striving to create a distinctive national visual language, some artists explored a highly personalised symbolist style often influenced by philosophical trends. Kostiantyn Piskorskyi, Mykhailo Sapozhnykov, and Oleksandr Bohomazov, as representatives of the younger generation, also drew on new currents of avant-garde art – cubofuturism or surrealism. Secession influence on the Ukrainian environment was relatively long lasting, continuing until the 1930s.
