ART AND PERSONALITY

Contemporary Artist Andrei Vasnetsov

Alexander Morozov

#1 2024 (82)

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.

The Charisma of Zurab Tsereteli

Aleksander Rozhin

#4 2021 (73)

The present century and the one preceding it have subsumed the greatest achievements and discoveries of world history. From the time of the Enlightenment to the present day, modern civilisation has made an incomparable spiritual contribution to global artistic culture. For all the wealth of national talents, each people has its own talismanic figures who embody the traditions of their ethnic group. However, on the level of wider humanity, it is rare to find figures who are outside their time, creed and ethnicity. Irrespective of aesthetic preferences, breadth of view or level of education, personalities on such a scale are defined by a combination of both their creative and social activity.

Natalya Nesterova. PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST

Valery Turchin, Alexander Morozov, Natalya Nesterova, Yuri Rost, Alexander Rozhin

#2 2021 (71)

Let the game begin. Have these hollow cocoon-bodied figures really reached us from some metaphysical remoteness, or does it just seem that way? Their figures are wrapped with bandages of playing cards, like the wounded or the mummified dead of Ancient Egypt. They are speechless, they have nothing to say, yet we understand that they are arrivals from unknown lands in which passion burns souls to ashes, which is to say that they are allegories in the most banal and most elevated sense with regard to style and the meaning of the figure. We also know that it was the artist herself - Natalya Nesterova - who invited them: it is at her canvases that we are looking, those are her colours and her images. On a table in her studio on Arbat Street there is a partial deck of cards, a game of solitaire spread out nearby. Let the cards foretell.

A Master Ahead of His Time

Alexander Rozhin

#2 2014 (43)

ZURAB TSERETELI'S CONTRIBUTION TO WORLD ART IS ENORMOUS. THE SCOPE OF HIS ARTISTIC PURSUITS IS ALL-ENCOMPASSING AND MANIFESTS ITSELF IN MONUMENTAL AND EASEL WORKS, DESIGN AND APPLIED ART. TO SAY "HE EXISTS IN ART" WOULD BE WRONG - ART LIVES THROUGH HIM, HIS SOUL, HIS THOUGHTS AND HIS LIFE. THE POET ILYA REZNIK GAVE AN ACCURATE, VIVID AND COMPREHENSIVE ASSESSMENT OF THE MAESTRO'S CAREER IN ART, WHICH IS MARKED BY HIS FORMIDABLE TALENT AND INFINITE INDUSTRIOUSNESS: "IT WAS NOT THAT THE ARTIST CHOSE PAINTING - PAINTING CHOSE HIM." THIS POETIC EXPRESSION DESCRIBES AN ARTIST OF GREAT AND WIDE-RANGING GIFTS, TO WHOM, TO QUOTE ANOTHER POET, VALERY BRYUSOV, "ONLY WORK BRINGS HAPPINESS... LONG HOURS OF HARD WORK".

 

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