Art for Life

“Art for life” is the most large-scale project of the Borys Lozhkin Charitable Foundation and one of the most important events in the world of contemporary Ukrainian art.

A well-known collector and philanthropist, Borys Lozhkin, decided to combine the aid to the children and the support of the Ukrainian artists. Each year, the foundation gathers artists, both the recognized masters and the novices, and the patrons in one place. The proceeds from auctioning the art objects are spent to buy equipment for pediatric health care facilities.

In addition to raising funds, the auction aims to open the new talented artists to the world. It is namely from the auction “Art for life” that the path of young artists to recognition sometimes begins.

The first auction took place in 2015. “The project started as a bold experiment. The idea to collect works of contemporary Ukrainian artists and to sell them at a charity auction was quite fresh, nobody had done this before in Ukraine, so we were really worried. Will the artists want it? Will the patrons be interested in it? Will the raised funds be sufficient to achieve the desired plans?” — Borys Lozhkin recalls.

The experiment was successful. Over the course of five years, nearly 100 artists and over 300 patrons took part in the auctions. The total amount of the raised funds has reached UAH 42 million.

The largest aid was received by the headed by Illia Yemets Center for Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery – a unique medical center where the best Ukrainian physicians save thousands of children with congenital heart defects and vascular diseases every year. Treatment for the young Ukrainians in the Center is free.

The Center is the leader among similar health care facilities in Europe by the number of the performed operations. Over the past 10 years, more than 280,000 patients of the Center have received highly qualified consultations and more than 16,000 surgeries have been made

The founder of the Center, a prominent surgeon, doctor of medical sciences, Professor Illia Yemets, was the first in the post-Soviet space who started operating newborns with complex heart defects in 1992.

In 2009, the specialists of the Center were the first in the world to implement the practice of surgery in the first hours of a child's life, with use of the umbilical cord blood. To date, 170 such operations are in the experience of the Center, and the method itself has been called “Ukrainian” in international practice.