Art is many-sided in its countless revelations – styles, trends, creative individualities. At this exhibition we meet the art bent for one of the realistic traditions.
But though it is rather paradoxical, this tradition belongs to those that have by now been forgotten by the realists themselves. The teacher of Serov, Vrubel, Polenov and Savisnsky, Pavel Petrovich Chistyakov, several decades ago honoured by our academicians (in reality not always with genuine and deep understanding) was its founder.
The author of the exhibited works, Natalia Sokolova (specialist in art studies, researcher at State Russian Museum) learnt this “tradition” not from the mouth of her teachers in her art school and even not in the walls of Academy of Fine Arts, from which she graduated in 1976. It happened much earlier when she was just 17. In her native town, in Vologda art gallery she saw the portrait of Vsevolod Mamontov by M.A. Vrubel. She was fascinated by the plastic power of his painting. And “the cult of deep nature” (Vrubel’s words about the method used by Chistyakov) captivated the beginning art studies specialist forever. An irresistible desire first to learn “where it is from” and “what it is” appeared, followed by “what if I try myself”. The latter happened not so soon:
"By mere chance in 1992 I learnt that there is a place in St. Petersburg, the only and unique one, where the disappearing tradition is being carefully maintained, where artists keep gathering and working. It is a room in a house in Bolshoi prospect of Vasilievsky Island, which remained from the former flat of professor V.Ye. Savinsky, one of the closest students of P.P. Chistyakov. It was here where I started my first serious lessons of drawing and fine art. In 2003 in Vologda I had two small exhibitions, both held in Vologda art museum. In St. Petersburg in 2005 there was an exhibition together with Boris Rapoport (posthumous) in the exhibition hall of the University of Vegetative Polymers.
I have consciously come to the school which is close to me (according to Vrubel it is “a formula of my live attitude towards nature inserted in me”). I like to paint "a la prima", to take the colour at once in all its force and purity, I like to “model” sculpturally the form with the colour, enjoying its natural beauty. I like it both in oil painting and in aquarelle.
Aquarelle in this tradition is the most complicated technique. Its main peculiarities are accurately made up colour taken at once at full capacity, one-pass touch of the brush, and work on the “dry canvas”. And maybe in aquarelle the peculiarities of this technique are revealed brighter than in oil painting, as the borders of the strokes which determine the form are more obvious here. It is all about the technique. But technique in art is just a means for fulfillment of the main thing – the one the art exists for. What is this main thing for me? Do you remember Zabolotsky’s verse: Love fine art, oh poets,
For only it has the gift
To transfer to the canvas
The signs of the ever-changing soul The poet’s words are addressed to the art of portrait but the genre doesn’t matter much here. Portrait, landscape, still life or so-called “topic” – all of them reflect the “signs of soul”. And it is true happiness when you can reveal it with the means close to your inner nature”. |
