Contemporary Artist Andrei Vasnetsov

Andrei Vladimirovich Vasnetsov (1924-2009) is the famous grandson of the legendary great classic Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov. The younger Vasnetsov’s name has been known since the second half of the 1950s: he was one of the leaders of young artists in the “thaw” movement, was among the first Russian masters to discover and promote contemporary style wedding form-building modernist ideas with the poetics of Russian painting. Despite repeated dressing-downs from the Communist Party, he did much to develop contemporary mural painting and monumental-decorative composition, combining vigorous modern rhythms and forms of expression with a humanist philosophy and free intellectual spirit. He also became one of the greatest teachers of the Russian art school in the second half of the 20th century - was head of the chair at Moscow’s Polygraphic Institute, which cohorts of his students graduated from. He was a full member of the Academy of Arts, had the title of the People’s Artist and was the last chairman of the USSR Union of Artists.

Andrei Vladimirovich VASNETSOV. Female portrait. 1957
Oil on canvas. 120 * 100 cm. © The State Tretyakov Gallery, 2024

Looking back at A.V. Vasnetsov’s oeuvre one is left convinced that his paintings are courageously powerful. The works of other “shestidesiat- niks” (artists who worked in the 1960s, the time of “thaw”) can also be described in these terms but Andrei Vasnetsov’s best canvases not infrequently made a particularly strong impression with a striking combination of professional, “museum”, quality and personal vividness and emotiveness. The viewer never failed to understand that the works were clearly modernistic in style, products of the time and place which Vasnetsov felt as his own.

Inheriting his grandfather’s directness and consistency, Andrei Vasnetsov never denied his affiliation to Cubism, Cubism a-la “Vkhute- mas” group, V.A. Favorsky, K.N. Istomin and R.R. Falk. His relying on 20th century modernist classics is vivid proof of the museum status of his painting. His own painting style is remarkably noble; free from tricks and gimmicks of any sort, his art is never flippant or coquettish. Vasnetsov, like his contemporaries, gained much from modern Italian culture. The direct influence of artists such as Giorgio Morandi, Renato Guttuso or Giuseppe Zigaina is, at times, clearly evident. However, it is the ideas and “moods” present in Italian neo-realist cinema that most often pervaded the works of young Russian artists of the 1960s.

This also applies to the early Vasnetsov. The masterpieces of that period immediately received a fairly clear recognition of connoisseurs. Thus, in “Still Life with a Black Hen” and “Breakfast” (both, 1962), the painter’s conscious immersion into the everyday life of a modern city dweller, as well as the objects surrounding them become a kind of sign of their fate and social situation, and, eventually, the final statement of the dramatic essence of the existence of the lyrical hero, an ordinary individual, whether Italian or Russian. In all this there is a direct consonance with neorealist art.

At that time, this philosophy of life, with its distinct existentialist overtones, was quite bold. We need only remind ourselves that the artist was then dealing not with Russian, but with Soviet people. Vasnetsov’s somewhat dark, ascetic world was as far removed from the optimistic Soviet model as could be possible. And yet, such was the artist’s worldview.

In the middle of the last century, the existential approach was quite common in philosophy; one cannot help but link it to the sombre mood of paintings resulting from this approach. Existentialist vision does not acknowledge “heroes” - the person and all the attributes of their surroundings are seen as part of the universal flow of life. Furthermore, meaning of being is sought through engagement with the strained, uneasy contrasts of light and darkness, black and white. Any “storyline” develops against this difficult background. Vasnetsov’s two-tone, black-and- white means of representation also seems reminiscent of neo-realist cinema.

Dramatic symbolism determines the emotional aspect of his painting, which is sometimes referred to as “black”, given the prevalence of dark shades in the artist’s palette. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to assume that the artist revelled in gloom and obscurity. In a number of his paintings, particularly from later years, darkness is replaced by fine, rich colours. Even some of his early works possess a remarkable warm glow. “Aunt Masha” (or “Woman Wearing a Headscarf” (1957, V.S. Semionov’s collection) and the “Portrait of a Woman” (1957, State Tretyakov Gallery) with its hearty brick red tones could not be further from any inclination to pessimism.

A.V. Vasnetsov’s mature work dates from the late 1960s. At that time, the artist began to develop what could be called a set of personal canons. His easel works of that period appear to follow one another, forming an impressive series, when individual compositions seem to be forming a monumental frieze. They are laconic and gravitate towards geometricism, they play on the plasticity of a large figure presented as a dynamic silhouette placed in a relatively tight shallow space. The merit of Vasnetsov’s compositions is the combination of monumental architectonics with the charm of lively plasticity of the depicted figures, which even in a laconic planar form retains the character of spontaneous body movement.

In the 1970s, the artist’s imagery and style came to possess classic convincingness. His easel works from that period seem like an oasis of stability amidst the highly charged black-and- white vastness of his painting. It is a world both real and ideal. And yet, whatever troubled the artist forcing its way into his personal “circle of harmony”, continued to demand some sort of resolution. Risking his very principles, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Vasnetsov turned to a series of experiments. Introducing a textual element into his paintings, he appeared almost ready to sacrifice the unique dynamic wholeness of a painting, which had been so important to him.

Two such composite paintings are worth mentioning here. “Funeral of a Soldier” (1978) shows a funeral scene, a soldier’s grave surrounded by the dead man’s fellow combatants. Guns lifted, the final salute rings out. Above the men’s heads, the words “a warrior unknown is buried here” are traced in the sky. The painting leaves an extraordinary impression - it combines meanings often encountered together in reality yet seldom mixed in art. The event is portrayed in all its shocking mundaneness, brought home by signs, bare and unmistakeable yet also coarse and grotesque: another funeral of another soldier killed in one of Russia’s many bloodbaths of the last century.

The second one is “The Hunting Spree” (1977). It includes a classic line from Pushkin: “...horse’s feet will trample cruelly the winter wheat”. As in the previous painting, there is a contrast between the word and the image, yet here the result is opposite, it is humorous - in an unexpected ironic twist, the text written into the image makes the everyday scene take on an abstract, almost philosophical quality. One can imagine that the artist is seeking ways of enriching his easel images through the use of non-imagery signs.

The 1980s and 1990s became for Vasnetsov a period of increasingly difficult life trials which limited his ability to paint. Nevertheless, his later works reveal an astounding diversity of colour and mood. Take, for instance, “Rain” and “Rainbow” (both - 1990), “Peeling Potatoes” (1994) or “Staircase in Abramtsevo” (1997). The shimmering gold, delicate raspberry pink and fine emerald green possess a cool, metallic quality, like the gleam of steely-black coal - it is as if they have somehow evolved from the grey and black shades so favoured by the artist. Such colours are exclusively his own. No other artist of the time uses anything like them, and yet they seem completely in keeping with the Russian national tradition, with the “blood” of it.

After what has been said above, I hope it will not seem strange that the painting “Eclipse” (2003), both in terms of the time of its creation and in essence, caused in me the feeling of it being a kind of final chord in Andrei Vladimirovich Vasnetsov’s exhibition activity and the desire to view it retrospectively, in a historical context of the interchange of epochs, the starting point of which is Isaac Levitan’s unforgettable classic “Eternal Peace” in the Tretyakov Gallery collection. Both landscapes are filled with a sense of expectation, both meaningful and symbolic. Vasnetsov’s painting is steeped in the atmosphere of tremendous change occurring in Russian society at the turn of the 21st century. It appears that this late canvas by our master is one of those works which the art of Russia is in great need of today.

Written in 2005 for the Tretyakov Gallery magazine, the article by Alexander Ilyich Morozov (1941-2010) on the eightieth anniversary of Andrei Vladimirovich Vasnetsov, has, in a short time, become truly classic. The editorial board decided to publish the article again in the thematic issue of the magazine dedicated to the Vasnetsov dynasty. The article was slightly shortened and edited.