Dimensions of freedom of Ukrainian art in the late 80s and early 90s of the 20th century and their manifestation in artistic associations of that time

The relevance of the research topic lies in the insufficient study of such a period of Ukrainian art as the turn of the 1980s and early 1990s, when banned artists came out of the underground, taking advantage of the weakening of the ideological pressure of the Soviet system, and led powerful artistic movements involved in the formation of dimensions of free creativity. The purpose of the work is to clarify the conditions for the development of Ukrainian art at the turn of the 80s and 90s of the 20th century, and to highlight the importance of creative associations in the process of artists’ realisation of new tasks in the emerging continuum of freedom (on the example of the associations “The Way” and “The Strontium-90”). The methodological apparatus of the study consists of three stages (preparatory, research and synthesising) using the following methods: analysis of literary and scientific sources, dialectical method in the emergence of a new phenomenon, method of logical analysis, method of critical and comparative analysis, synergistic method, generalisation, method of hypothesis and forecasting. The study found that at the end of the 1980s, under the influence of the Chornobyl disaster, Ukrainian “unofficial” art left the status of marginal, and its representatives became the forerunners of a new free creative continuum. The artists of the new generation, using the neo-avant-garde experience of their colleagues and the factor of freedom of expression, strive to use the latest creative practices, which has connected them to the global artistic space. The study argues that neo-mythologism, as one of the main principles of world art of the second half of the 20th century, at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s became decisive in the process of creating a free artistic continuum. This principle led to the most individualised figurative system of expression of Ukrainian artists of the new generation. The paper examines two artistic associations, “The Way” and “Strontium-90”, and their role in shaping the Ukrainian free creative continuum. The practical significance of the study lies in the use of the results in the creation of recommendations and methodological guides on the history of Ukrainian art of the 20th and 21st centuries and gallery business