Paintings by Ukrainian children depict horrors of war and dreams of the future in bright, colorful illustrations

• The lives of children displaced by the war in Ukraine were upended in the wake of the nearly year-long conflict.
• To help them cope, a Lviv-based artist and her daughter started an art therapy program.

Dozens of brightly colored illustrations are hung on the walls of an exhibit at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago. In a corner of the gallery, a video shows children laughing with their peers while finger-painting and scribbling on paper — a scene no different than your everyday preschool or kindergarten class. Upon first glance, the artworks may seem like youthful interpretations of flowers and toys.

But a closer look reveals harrowing depictions of tanks, bloodied soldiers, and buildings on fire, and the children in the video robbed of family members and their childhood in the midst of a devastating war.

Nestled in the heart of the Ukrainian Village in Chicago, UIMA is showcasing artworks created by children displaced by the war in Ukraine in a new exhibit titled, "Children of War," which will run until February 12.

Shortly after the onset of the Ukraine war in February of last year, Lviv-based artist and art teacher Nataliia Pavliuk and her daughter Yustyna hosted an art therapy program for children in the city to express themselves through a more creative lens.

Before long, word began to spread about the program, gathering hundreds of children ages 2 to 15 from Kharkiv, Mariupol, Kiev, and other Ukrainian cities to participate in classes hosted at orphanages, hospitals, community centers, and art galleries in Lviv, a city in western Ukraine.

Adrienne Kochman, the curator at UIMA, noted that while the subject matter of each child's painting can vary, they're all united by how brightly colored they are.

"I think the thing that I find the most engaging is that they're all different. You'll see several images of flowers or animals or things like that, but even so, they're still different," Kochman told Insider. "The one thing they share in common visually is that they're all very brightly painted. It's the color and the intensity of the work, but the contexts are just so different.

Artworks in the exhibit ranged from a Van Gogh-inspired view of a backyard to harrowing depictions of a house on a fire with a tank outside and broken toys strewn across the lawn.

One child drew a pile of bloody boots with the words, "Boots that Ukrainian soldiers will not need."

Another child drew a faded silhouette of a Ukrainian solder holding a Ukrainian flag, who Kochman said was the young illustrator's father who died in combat.

"It just seems like it's another step in their treatment or their healing because this kind of trauma tends to isolate children," Kochman said. "They don't know how to speak about it because you can't make sense of what happened."

"Sometimes, they also work with psychologists and medical staff who would ask them, 'What happened?' or 'What is this of?' or the backstory" of their art, Kochman said. "The child has no family anymore, is an orphan, and yet they're painting something that does not illustrate that at all."

One of the children, 9-year-old Maria from Donetsk, a city in eastern Ukraine, participated in a class while she was in a children's hospital in Lviv, painting a cat using only pink colors.

When asked if she had any sisters, Maria responded, "Yes, I have ... I had a sister. She was on a bus when a missile hit."

Veronica, 10, was recently orphaned in the war after a tank attacked her home. Veronica had gone through surgical procedures to remove shrapnel that was stuck in her body and head following the attack, which left her partially paralyzed, Kochman said.

As devastating as her experience may be, Veronica's art tells a different story as she uses neon-bright colors to portray herself in a long gown with a full head of hair, holding the hand of her friend who is gifting her a bright pink heart-shaped balloon.

"These children saw 'hell' in the true sense of the word, but they continue to live as children, with hope and love in their hearts," Pavliuk said in a statement. "We will continue these art therapy sessions as long as they are needed."