The United Faculty of Fine Art    

     The United faculty of fine art is one of the greatest structural subdivisions of the academy. Teaching there is based on the methods, which provide engrafting skills of creative work in different kinds of painting, sculpture, and graphics. It consists of the departments on speciality: drawing, painting and composition, graphic arts, sculpture, restoration of works of art. The administration is conducted through the common dean's office.
     Formation and structural organisation of the faculty has its long history dealing with repeated reconstruction and reorganisations. It started with the foundation of the Ukrainian art academy in December 1917. The statute of those times meant individual professors' studios to be the main educational foundations. The academy started its functioning with the activity of individual professors' studios of easel painting (under the leadership of the professors O.Murashko and F.Krychevsky), of monumental painting (under the leadership of M.Boychuk), of graphics (under the leadership of G.Narbut), of composition (under the leadership of V.Krychevsky), of landscape (under the leadership of M.Burachek and A.Manevych). Really, the individual professors' studios were based on the experience of small foreign academies by their creative activity and forms of organisation.
     In 1924, when the Institute (former Ukrainian art academy) of plastic arts was amalgamated with the Kyiv architectural institute that led to the foundation of the Kyiv art institute on their basis, the next reformation of art education started including it into the general system of professional education brought by the soviet power. Thus it was put into the direct dependence from the ideological and production needs. The foundation of the architectural faculty at the educational institution greatly influenced the transformation of the conceptual basis of the activity of united educational-creative subdivisions. The orientation on "production" was lain in the basis of new faculties and departments, thus in the overcoming of the principle of "pure easel work" and rising the applied function of art.
     Thus the classical three ones - painting, sculpture and architecture suffered fundamental modification. The formation of the material-object surrounding was made the main aim of the specialisation that determined the structure of art faculties and turns of their activity. The faculties of painting and sculpture which formed separate structural units administrated by their own dean's offices were assigned for forms of mass production and the monumental ones.
     The faculty of painting consisted of three departments. The department of easel and monumental painting was the main one, and M.Boychuk and F.Krychevsky (who was the dean of the faculty then) played the main role in its activity. The so-called department for theatre-photo-cinema trained specialists in the field of theatre decoration and design, photography and cinema art, where V.Meller, V.Tatlin, M.Tryaskin worked. The branch of art textiles led by famous specialist S.Kolos trained artists in the field of artistic design of fabric, carpets, embroidery etc.
     B.Kratko, I.Severa and Ye.Sagaydachny worked at the faculty of sculpture. The faculty considered the training of specialists in wood working up and ceramics as one of its tasks besides the general problems of engrafting skills on speciality, necessary for decorative design of architectural structures and during work on easel and monumental plastics, like working with different materials (clay, stone, wood, metal etc.). The faculty consisted of the branches: sculptural, wood working up and ceramics.
     Fundamental modifications took place in the training of specialists in graphics with the foundation of the faculty of printing and publishing industry, which trained high-skilled specialists in printing and publishing industry. Three branches of book, colour printing, reproduction and illustration of magazines fulfilled that task. By the end of 1930-s the faculty gained considerable success in the further formation of national graphic school founded by G.Narbut due to the activity of such famous artists in graphic art as A.Sereda, S.Nalepynska-Boychuk, A.Usachiov, and I.Pleshchynsky. But in 1930 the faculty was moved to Kharkiv were it formed the basis of the new-founded institute for printing and publishing industry of Ukraine.
     The structure of the institute changed in 1930 when the propagandists of proletarian culture took the administration in their hands that negatively affected the level of training of future artists. Its formation was regenerated having been reorganised art education in 1934 when two faculties of fine art - the faculty of painting and the sculptural one were left at the institute and to acquire easel forms and methods using the realistic traditions of the academic school education became their task.
     The academic system being mastered gradually on the thoroughly developed educational programmes and methods became the basis of the formation of stable school of mastery conserving its significance during next stages of the development.
     The present structure of the academy is the consequence of the development of the educational process according to the growth of spiritual demands. Thus the process of the regeneration of monumental art traditions at the turning point of 1950-1960s caused the opening of the monumental painting studio at the faculty in 1964, theatre-decorative department in 1962, the department of restoration of works of art in 1969. In 1993 new studios of easel painting, monumental painting and cathedral culture, historical painting and landscape painting were opened.
     Having just returned from evacuation the Kyiv art institute, teaching of graphics was resumed there at the faculty of painting in 1944 and the separate faculty with specialisations: illustration and book design; easel graphics; poster was opened. The specialisation of visual propaganda was introduced in 1974 and existed till 1988, when the demands for political poster and visual propaganda disappeared and the studios were reorganised to the ones of free graphics, book graphics, book design and interlinking in 1993.
     The training of specialists in accordance with the traditional division of plastic art into the monumental and easel one is conducted at the faculty of sculpture.
     Today the united faculty of fine art at the National academy of fine art and architecture is a multiprofilieration structure that trains wide range of experts in traditional specialisation and also in the new ones according to the contemporary aesthetic views, tastes and intellectual level of the society.