Julia Metka

A modern fairy tale as a weapon. The pea tsar builds up his military capabilities year after year and one day turns his cannons towards the land of mushrooms. The milklings living there, led by their commander, the porcini mushroom, fight against the aggressive yet cowardly peas and defend their land against the invaders. This unique art book, consisting of 36 images, is a skillful and aesthetic homage to Heorhij Narbut (1886-1920), a classic of Ukrainian art and an important figure in the history of Ukrainian modernism. His small book "The War of the Mushrooms" from 1906 was a fairy-tale metaphor for a senseless conquest war that no one wants to participate in, and it foreshadowed the humanitarian catastrophes of the 20th century. The collaboration of two gifted artists, illustrator Nikita Kravtsov and writer Andrij Kurkov, elevates the fairy tale to multiple political layers full of symbolism and references to the current Ukrainian reality and the war of annihilation that Russia is waging against Ukraine.