„Fantasy stressed the reality... " I. Brodsky
I was always sure that an artist more or less resembles his works. Surely, not only in self-portraits, one of which is the most precise copy of its creator-the painter Alexander Rumyantsev. You can guess the expressiveness behind this outer restraint and even insularity. This expressiveness, however, does not confront with his peculiar lonesomeness, his being absorbed in thoughts and the retirement into the "inner emigration". This is the self-portrait painted in brownish tones with the sharp expressive silhouette. Among others - sometimes even prickly extravagant pictures - it is the most capacious and sharp not only visually but also due to its depth of penetration into the author's character. But in this case it is the self-portrait which is to correspond to the creator's appearance and his spiritual face. However, where is the similarity to him in his landscapes of St. Petersburg and Paris, Israel and Italy and those of Onega countryside? Beaches at night or by daylight, minimized in regard to the amount of pictorial instruments but with the energy, power of painting developed to the maximum; with the combination of flats, colour stains and lines in his abstract works. In his urban „views", full of incessant life with everlasting motion of autos, flashing of varicoloured advertisement and lighted windows with their own mystery behind. There are refined and expressive figures in the pictures, nude dancers, groups of people in the street - as if they were snatched out of the moving mass of faces on the escalator. What common have all these figures, characters, visages, plastic constructions, decorative variants of forms and lines with the artist Rumyantsev depicted them in his paintings? First of all his works sometimes contain - just as real life -the harmony of antithetic features, as though the natural restraint were compensated with the bursting passion of colour, impetuosity of motion. After each meeting with the painter - either at the exhibition or in the studio - you get a certain impression based on emotional impulses; vivid, pictorial streams. It goes without saying that we do not mean a mould from the painter's character, but some definitive artistic associations. In the author's appearance which is so exactly reflected in his self-portrait you can sense the epicenter of emotions, temperament, imperceptible tension that - like in his countryside landscapes, Palestinian hills and Israel cities; in light, sometimes moderate or - on the contrary - thrilling abstractions creates the image of the complex harmony. Sometimes the plastic idea of expressed consent dominates in it. Sometimes it becomes the harmony of contrasts. You will find it in the dark mysterious beaches with their wizard lights and in the paintings of the countryside series with the black houses stiffed in the strange charm of thickening twilight.
Apropos, some more words concerning,, black". By Rumyantsev it has sensible shadings; it does not look like,, veil" what testifies to his deep pictorial culture and the cognition of dignified traditions (from El Greco till M. Nesterov, A. Rodchenko, P. Korin, Renato Guttoso... ). The same could be said, in a sense, about his green ponds saturated with the powerful spacious light containing its own dramaturgy, its own plastic fable.
Even in the relative softness of his colour resolution Rumyantsev does not avoid „ inconveniences" and hardships; he preserves a facet of imagery, a certain grade of passion or calmness. This is not the mathematical balance, but tactfulness required for composing a picture. It is also a feature of his character. Rumyantsev's thoroughgoingness is not aggressive. It is not provocative either. Even his sharpest fin regard to plastic) works are not defiant and make all chit-chats fall silent.
In his works there is the scale of fantasy and vivid streams of nature like in the works of any real artist. In the abstractions or in works which are close to abstract ones, where the form dominates, these streams are sensible rather associatively; here the artist must more think up than, for example, in a village where, he says “ the nature has its great impact”.
But in every case there is a direct feeling of creative process, search for abilities of pictorial plastic - its symbols, allegory or transmutation of prose into poetry. Both in the depictions of our real world and in the abstractions there are his emotions, his psychology with the dominance of natural or plastic motives. The words of a very emotional and fine painter - the artist's friend Anatoly Saslavsky - are absolutely precise:” The substance of life and the substance of colour are indivisible for Rumyantsev”. It is normal for the painter's creative process that he opposes clear forms with usual motives of nature. It is imaginable that his study in the Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, in the monumental studio of Professor Mylnikoff affected Rumyantsev 's creative work. Although he did not become a monumental artist his sensation of the "large form", his clearness of the composition, his ability to master convincingly the rhythm, the colour surface, the room; his palpable pictorial drawing - are the attributes of the feeling, knowledge and the gift in the field of monumental art. Rumyantsev is obviously a modern artist in a sense meant by P. D. Korin who believed that a new personality, not new forms, is the cornerstone of art; you ought to see in a new way, to feel... Such a sharp-cut vision is in Alexander Rumyantsev's arsenal. His art has no tragic collisions, but it is not indifferent; tenseness and searching spirit are apparent here. In addition we have to say that any structure, even the most formal one, does not become the scheme for the author's approach towards the image. He is looking for, diversifying and it is the creative movement of search and obtainment He will find the way.
Dr. Anatoly F. Dmitrenko,
Senior researcher
of the Russian Museum St. -Petersburg |
