Lika Spivakovska closed her two art galleries in Kiev, Ukraine, hours after Russia invaded her country and felt helpless as she traveled across Europe seeking refuge with her two children. Artists detained in Ukraine had been messaging her all week saying that their studios and studios at home had been destroyed by attackers.
Explosions in eastern Ukraine had damaged about 20 special spaces for artists, according to text messages sent to Ms. Spivakovska, leaving canvases charred, paintings tattered and complete livelihoods lost. “I have no studio, paint, canvases and none of my own works,” one artist complained in a message.
“I felt so guilty,” said Ms. Spivakovska, 38, who has championed emerging Ukrainian artists for nearly a decade and placed their work in one of her galleries, Spivakovska Art:Ego, which opened in 2014.
Now it was her responsibility, she felt, to help them during the war.
She posted a call for help on Facebook in February, asking if someone could connect her to a person familiar with NFTs, or non-replaceable tokens — a type of digital collectible that features a unique piece of code that serves as a permanent record of its authenticity.
Many of the artists’ works had been destroyed; but maybe, she thought, the stored photos of their pieces could be digitized into NFTs. Perhaps that would enable the poor Ukrainian painters to survive financially through online auctions as the war continued.
Finally, a friend introduced Ms. Spivakovska to Crystal Rose Pierce, the founder of Lighthouse, an NFT art gallery in Puerto Rico.
“When I got the call from her, it was 4 o’clock in the morning,” said Mrs. Pierce, “and I knew it was something important.”
She told Mrs. Spivakovska that the photos of the art of the Ukrainians and the images created from the damaged paintings and drawings after Russian attacks can be smashed into NFTs and part of a show at the Lighthouse museum in San Juan.
Ms. Spivakovska, who also founded a celebrity theater and is editor-in-chief of ARTNEWS.ONE, an online art publication, wanted to expand the show’s reach.
Artists and children still drew and painted in bomb shelters, often on iPads. Perhaps their artworks could also be sold as NFTs, she said, with all the money going directly to humanitarian efforts in Ukraine or to the artists and families of the children who provided artworks.
Ms. Pierce agreed, and just a day after speaking on the phone, a March show titled “Lighthouse for Ukraine” raised more than $30,000, showing one NFT of a painting partially damaged by a Russian bomb. and sold for about $10,000. Ms. Spivakovska asked people to send her more art so that their country could fully describe the toll of the war.
In two weeks, she received more than 450 artworks, mostly digital paintings that Ukrainians made in air raid shelters, and posted them on OpenSea, a marketplace where people can buy and sell NFTs. Some pieces depict the dark reality of war, such as bloodied bodies and a nursing mother in a bomb shelter, while others express joy in yellow and blue flowers. Some also mock President Vladimir Putin of Russia, illustrating him as a demon or snake-like creature with horns.
One of the artists who contributed to the project, Marianna Gyshchak, 30, from Kiev, said via WhatsApp on Wednesday that her “Fight for Freedom” drawing, which was turned into an NFT, a “cry from my heart was made in the bomb hideout.”
She would layer to keep warm in the windowless shelter and put an iPad in her lap, coloring in the blue and yellow hair of the woman centering her piece, holding a silver trident resembling Ukraine’s national symbol .
After it was sold, Ms. Spivakovska said, she tried to contact Ms. Gyshchak to share the good news, but was unable to reach her. Ms. Gyshchak had gone into hiding in Irpin, a suburb of Kiev that had become one of the most heavily fought battle zones in March.
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Ms. Spivakovska said she remembered thinking at the time: what if she gets killed?
A few days later, she connected with Ms. Gyshchak online. When she heard that someone had bought “Fight for Freedom”, Ms. Gyshchak told Ms. Spivakovska to donate all the proceeds to the Ukrainian army.
“They save our lives and I’m happy that my talent and art can help them,” she said. “This is the least I can do.”
Ms. Pierce, of the Lighthouse NFT gallery, said the gallery is planning a new Ukrainian NFT art exhibition in May and that all money from the sale would go to artists or humanitarian aid.
“What’s happened is so much art is pouring in from the country that we can now do something bigger,” she said.
Some paintings are of children who have spent weeks sleeping in bomb shelters, drawing part of their days on paper or electronic tablets.
A 7-year-old’s piece shows a round, bright rainbow surrounded by bombs drawn in messy squiggles. Another belongs to a 3-year-old girl whose grandmother died during the war. The drawing is a memory of her, Mrs. Pierce said.
Recently, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke about the power of art in a video address to artists and cultural leaders at the Venice Biennale in Italy.
“Art can tell the world things that can’t be shared otherwise,” he said.
Ms. Spivakovska agreed with that sentiment and said she was hopeful that one day she would be able to return home to her galleries in Kiev.
For two months, life has felt uncontrollable for Ukrainians, she said. And for artists, she added, “the only thing they can control is their talent.”