In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine – a 'captivating' exhibition

If there is one "tiny shred of good" that has come out of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it is that we have finally started to take notice of this "fascinating and crucial" country, said Waldemar Januszczak in The Sunday Times. Where once we might have considered it "a foggy blob in our lopsided imagining of Europe", occupied by various neighbouring powers for much of its history, its people and culture have now taken centre stage in our collective imagination. 

In the past, the story of modern art has seldom contained a "single paragraph" about Ukraine. Now, this "involving" exhibition, featuring more than 60 works created by Ukrainian artists in the first decades of the 20th century, sets that right. It tells "a complex artistic tale that keeps bumping tragically into the harsh world of politics". Most of the works here come from Ukraine's National Museum of Art, and were "smuggled out" of the country to keep them safe and promote a cultural history distinct from that of its larger neighbour. "As much an education as an art show, this is an important event."

Even were it not for the war, this would be "a captivating exhibition", said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. It shows how, in the early 20th century, Ukrainian artists melded styles such as cubism and futurism with Slavic folk traditions, invigorating them with a strong regional flavour. Alas, they were "insensitively lumped together in the West as 'the Russian avant-garde'", a categorisation that must have stung Ukrainians – for, in the 1930s, the Soviets purged the country's artistic elite, including many figures represented here. There's some fantastic work on show: a moving 1910-11 painting by Volodymyr Burliuk, for instance, depicts a "blue-eyed Ukrainian peasant woman" in front of an abstract pattern; Oleksandr Bohomazov's "Sharpening the Saws" (1927), meanwhile, offers "a rapturous, prismatic vision" of labourers in the local timber industry "tending to their tools".

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It seems "a stretch" to define this epoch of Ukrainian art as distinctive from that of neighbouring countries, said Jackie Wullschläger in the Financial Times. At the time, national identities in this part of the world were as "fluid" as the region's ever-shifting borders. Kazimir Malevich, for instance – represented here by a landscape of "a village seen through colossal forbidding tree trunks" – was born in Kyiv to Polish parents and lived largely in Russia. Another major artist, Kyivtrained Alexandra Exter, was born in Poland and spent most of her life in Paris. Still, there's no doubting her brilliance: her 1912 view of a bridge at Sèvres sees "shapes float or soar", colours shift, and "buildings abstracted into airy, blue-grey shards". It's a highlight of "a rich, always enlightening show" full of vivid, dynamic works, which is at times also "desperately affecting".

Royal Academy, London W1. Until 13 October