Nude
A genre of the visual arts whose subject is the unclothed human body; Ukrainian art history also uses the synonym akt.
The nude (Ukrainian niu, from French nu, “naked”) is a classical genre of fine art, and also of photography and film, whose subject is the unclothed body. Ukrainian art history uses akt as a synonym. In museum terminology nudes are defined simply as representations of unclothed human figures.
An unclothed figure in a work does not in itself place the work in the genre. The naked body was depicted from early times in the sculpture of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome and, from the Renaissance onwards, in mythological, biblical and historical compositions, where it was a component of another genre. According to R. Yatsiv, the nude established itself as a self-sufficient genre of painting, graphic art and sculpture in the mid-nineteenth century, in the work of Courbet, Manet and Renoir. In the twentieth century it became one of the key genres in the search for a new language of form; among the artists who built their own conceptions of form on it the encyclopaedia names Alexander Archipenko.
Among Ukrainian artists working in the genre, the Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine mentions L. Medvid, A. Chebykin, V. Pylypiuk and O. Roitburd.
