Workshop: The Ukrainian horizons of the Vienna School of Art History: Disentangling the cousins Zalozetskyi/Zaloziecky

27.02.2026

Organized by Maximilian Hartmuth (Univ. of Vienna), Mariana Bodnaruk (Univ. of Warsaw), Robert Born (BKGE Oldenburg).

Against the backdrop of a general surge in interest in Ukraine’s cultural heritage since the 2022 invasion, the name Wladimir Sas-Zaloziecki (and its various forms, including Volodymyr Zalozetskyi) has repeatedly come to the fore within Central European contexts. However, there has been some confusion as this name was borne by two individuals with intersecting biographies. Both hailed from east of the Carpathians and studied art history in Vienna in the early 1900s. After political activism during the interwar period, they found themselves in the former imperial capital once more in the 1940s. The younger of the two, from Lviv, pursued a successful, albeit fragmented, career as an art historian specializing in Byzantine and Eastern European art. The other, from Chernivtsi, initially worked in monument preservation and later became a senator in the Romanian parliament and a specialist in folk art. This workshop aims to expand knowledge of these individuals by drawing on information from archival and other sources. It also seeks to revisit their largely forgotten writings in light of their potentially overlooked merit.