Page 57 - Studio International - February 1973

Monday, June 22nd
and regulated according to a rhythm which was `Matyushin died in 1934, seven months
determined by the artist and the director.'3 before Malevich', Khardzhiyev concludes.
`A great many of Matyushin's compositions `Boris Ender, born in 1893, died in 196o, and
have been lost', continues Nikolai Ivanovich. both his younger sisters who were painters are I am looking for the painter Sitnikov, whom
`Only the titles are left — The Dance of Venus for also dead. The only one left is Boris's widow: someone has mentioned to me, just behind
violin and piano, which he himself performed; a she has helped prepare an exhibition of Boris's Lublyanka in an old, neglected, dirty,
piano arrangement of Vanquished War, in which work for a gallery in Rome.' Khardzhiyev wrote one-storey building with long corridors and a
he experimented with dissonant systems; and the introduction to the catalogue. gloomy series of doors. But the address is
the quarter-tone Composition for Voice, Violin I must say good-bye : Eduard Steinberg is out-of-date: the painter has moved. Nearby
and Piano. waiting for me. Along the way my thoughts turn lives Leonid Talochkin, a young collector and
`Otherwise futurist music is completely to Vladimir Yakovlev. This time I won't be archivist of the new Soviet art whom I once met
forgotten. The most important personality seeing him; no one knows exactly where he is at in Prague. Again an old, shabby building — the
connected with it was Nikolai Roslavyets, a present. Yakovlev suffers from a serious area is full of them — and I find Talochkin and his
great friend of Malevich's in his youth : he died impairment of his vision caused by a corneal slim Mordvin girl-friend in a large room with a
after the Second World War. He wrote many defect : it can no longer be cured. He can hardly wardrobe stuck across it, dividing it into a
pieces for piano and for orchestra — a rational perceive more than mere colours, and in order to work-room and a bedroom and freeing the walls
music, a highly calculated organization of the see what he has painted he must inspect the for paintings : they are crammed in here from
elements of sound which resembles in some surface from a distance of a few centimetres. floor to ceiling. I am glad he has invited me. This
ways Schonberg. Today he is forgotten. The Yakovlev was one of the first — as early as 1959 — is a different circle of painters from the one I
young Prokofiev also considered himself a to lead Soviet art back to the path of modern art. have been among so far: Kropivnitsky, Rabin,
futurist, and at the time wrote an article on He is not yet forty, but he has painted thousands Pyatnitsky, Svyeshnikov, Kharitonov — painters
Russolo. Matyushin and Roslavyets prepared of paintings which range from lyrical tending sometimes towards Expressionism and
an essay on music for the magazine Supremus abstraction to symbolic representation. His sometimes towards Surrealism, whose works
which Malevich wanted to start up in 1917, but friends also speak with awe of his extraordinary could be grouped together under the label of
with the Revolution it was no longer possible.' extra-sensory perception. And now I realize that `fantastic art'. Most of them are in relatively
Nikolai Ivanovich comes back to the work of the half-blind Yakovlev is in fact faithfully close contact with the world outside Russia, and
Guro and Matyushin as painters. He shows me carrying out Matyushin's programme of cosmic their work is reproduced in Western Europe:
some small paintings by Guro. They are on the visual intuition — his 'extended vision'. And this perhaps many people there consider them
borderline between Impressionism and is only one example of the underlying typical representatives of Russian art. I doubt if
Fauvism — the vision with its clear pure colours connections which can be found between this is really very accurate. Sometimes I think
is impressionist, the structure of the paintings contemporary Russian art and its past. that this Russianness is too conscious and
and the broad brush strokes are fauvist. Yelena's Eduard Steinberg lives some distance away in therefore of secondary importance artistically :
work was soon terminated by her untimely a pleasant small flat where he also works. Born in this psychologizing and these run-down
death, but Matyushin continued developing 1937, he is the youngest artist I have visited so cottages and people are features which mark
as a painter during the First World War, and far. He is a born painter, and for him them out as certified Russian, just as a certain
reached a stage of colourful abstraction. In 1913 painting is the most natural way of living and freedom of composition and movement in the
Matyushin published his commentary on expressing himself. Evening is drawing in, and paintings marks them out as certified modern. I
Gleizes and Metzinger's book Du cubisme, and, Steinberg quickly sets out painting after am thinking chiefly of Rabin — but I am here for
inspired by the new physics, he voiced in it the painting. They are mostly beautiful works done too short a time to be able to make more specific
principle of the new perception of space. In in the classical French manner — in fact, perhaps judgements.
1916-17 he wrote the first version of his the purest artistic creations I have met with in Two names are quite new to me : Vyacheslav
programmatic essay 'The Extension of Vision' : Moscow. Steinberg's paintings are all dazzling Kalinin and Yevgeny Rukhin. The former is a
the definitive version dates from 1923-24. white. When I saw them for the first time, he was painter of that same old world — of that Moscow,
Matyushin located the capacity for this using short impressionist brush-strokes, but which is not really a city but is no longer the
extra-visual perception of shapes and colours in now he often uses a spatula, so that the surfaces country, poor and shabby, despairing, hysterical,
the back part of the brain and claimed that it was look as if they are lacquered, and at the same drunken — and he too paints it in those free,
a cosmic perception of nature. Boris Ender time he has strengthened the paintings' imaginative, narrative compositions which are
worked with him on practical experiments. structure. Within their abstract conception considered modern. But there is one special
Once again I look at the paintings by Yelena several personal symbols recur — a dead bird, an feature in his work — the use of urban kitsch,
Guro and compare them with Matyushin's. Her animal's skull. They enter quite logically into which fits in very closely with his themes and
Impressionism leads straight to the abstraction the paintings, the painting here is a means of gives his paintings a distinctively individual
of Matyushin — in fact it is the same painting, understanding; and at the same time all the quality. With Rukhin, I am attracted most by a
but the line is more decisive, the colours have colours in it are reduced to these degrees of picture dated four or five years ago, which is in
lost their impressionist clarity and the subject white, the abstraction of the painting becomes fact no more than a replica of a wall in some old
has been removed. `Matyushin and Ender felt the symbol of a metaphysical order revealed house, painted in that unpleasant enamel green
that Malevich ignored organic nature, whereas behind the forms of the phenomenological you see everywhere here, and with graffiti
they began from it', explains Khardzhiyev. world, and the white luminosity which radiates scrawled all over it. In his most recent paintings
`Guro provided the basis for their art, and what from the painting is the painter's ultimate he has given a monumental quality to small
they were really painting was abstract landscape. vision. Steinberg shows me painting after ordinary things by isolating them and enlarging
"Things merge into one another like colours", painting, but I would like to see them hanging them enormously — a belt buckle, the catch on a
said Ender.' So it is no accident that the in an empty room : if they could freely pour out lock. I learn that Kalinin is from Moscow, and
pictures by Boris Ender and his younger sister their white light, they would make the whole Rukhin comes from Leningrad, but is now
Maria that I saw in the Russian Museum in room abstract. I speak to Steinberg of Rothko's visiting Moscow. Tomorrow I will meet both
Leningrad reminded me of the Lyrical oecumenical chapel, which I showed in a photo of them.
Abstraction of the fifties. Russian art had on Friday, and Steinberg eagerly agrees; it I return home through the old quarter nearby.
reached this stage thirty years before Western interested him more than any of the other things I am not far from the centre of the city, and the
European art. he saw there. old dyerevyannaya Moskva (wooden Moscow)

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