CHERNOBYL
49th International Art Exhibition Biennale Venice, Italy, 2001

When in May 1996 we visited the photo exhibition of our friend Viktor Marushtchenko in the art gallery the power and frankness of his pictures impressed us so much that we spontaneously decided to dedicate a book to his work that was created over a period of twenty years. In 1997 we were able to publish the book “Viktor Marushtchenko – Ukraine Photographs” with the publisher Benteli in Berne.
In 2001, together with the curator Harald Szeemann, we curated the exhibition “Chernobyl” for the Biennale in Venice.

Marushtchenko belongs to those artists who made the commuter between East and West conscious of the differences between the two worlds, “Artists, who radically and openly realize art, not for a trend – addicted market, but as basic nourishment, out of existential necessity.”

On April 26, 1986, one of the four nuclear reactors exploded in Chernobyl. A few days after, on May 8, 1986 the Ukrainian photographer Viktor Marushtchenko left for Chernobyl. He has spent the 15 years after the "incident" chronicling a tragedy that has destroyed the reality of the inhabitants of this contaminated area.