Page 37 - Studio International - December 1974

unconsciously or through thoughtlessness, The work of B. Sveshnikov, perhaps one of London). Later they were joined by V. Kalinin,
interpret this phenomenon). This encounter the most interesting of the artists now working E. Rukhin from Leningrad, Y. Zharkikh and
had much more serious consequences: the in Moscow, began towards the end of the forties others. They were far from being abstract,
artists discovered within themselves a creative in the camps of Vorkuta, where he was thrown and did not present themselves as innovators
potential which they did not suspect they had, as an 18-year-old by Stalin's terror machine, of forms, but as innovators in their vision of the
as they were crushed by the system of limitation together with millions of innocent people, and world, discoverers of new interpretations of it.
cultivated through socialist realist education. where he spent eight years of his life. Behind Abstract artists appeared and have not so far
They applied the arsenal of contemporary the external surrealism of his delicate fantasies occupied a leading place in unofficial Soviet
methods and means to express their own vision, stands a reality and an acute vision of the world, art [3]. At the beginning of the sixties, the
which differed from the Western to a great not yet encountered in other works of masters Moscow artist Lev Nusberg organized the
extent. of the twentieth century. 'Movement' group, which occupied itself with
The work of A. Zverev is of interest in this The work of 0. Rabin carries the imprint of the problem of synthetic art: the combination
respect. During the International Exhibition of the Moscow mode of life. His reality is the of colour, light, movement and form. I. Kabakov
Youth Festival in Moscow in 1957, he met workers' suburbs, the slums by the railroads and V. Yankilevsky began to elaborate on the
a live tachiste for the first time, the American where Rabin worked as a loader after he was principle of conceptualist art and pop art. In
artist Harry Colman, and observed how with a expelled from an institute of art for his 'leftism'. recent years others explored the newest trends
totally rational reflex control he splashed out a He began by painting what he saw: rickety in Western art, notably A. Melamid, V. Komar
flow of paint onto the canvas. Zverev began to houses, crooked, muddy little streets, cans, and P. Beleniuk. Regardless of official pressure,
use this method differently. He continued to bottles, cats, icons. He uses the grotesque the unofficial art movement in the Soviet Union
paint from nature, but the creative process now method to intensify the feeling of organic continues to widen and strengthen.
became a short and concentrated wilful act, curvature, unevenness, cosy asymmetry, the When these artists began only a few of them
in which consciousness is switched off and the usual ramshackle human surroundings. At were over twenty years of age, and during the
brush is given the right to follow the course the same time, he possesses a fine feeling for short period of the so-called 'Khrushchev
prompted by the artist's innermost layers of matter, so that the rich texture and colour of a liberalism' the question of contemporary art
perception. As a result, Zverev created a variant bottle or a herring are suddenly revealed with aroused great interest in the country: it seemed
of realistic tachism: from the swift strokes of all the artistic brilliance of the old masters. a semi-underground professional existence
his brush and dashes of paint, emerged Others who persisted in holding to their might be possible for them. They organized
realistically typical shapes, opening aspects of principles were V. Nemukhin, D. Plavinsky, exhibitions in youth clubs, in private homes,
the model, which otherwise could not have A. Kharitonov, D. Krasnopevtsev, V. Yakovlev, on the premises of technical and scientific
been expressed by a method of realistic and 0. Kudryashov (who recently emigrated research institutes, where high-ranking officials
imitation. from the Soviet Union and is now living in could disregard the opinion of the Ministry of

(Far left top) V. Kalinin
(Left top) V. Kalinin A Gipsy Sells Wine 1972
(Far left bottom) Yurii Zharkikh Self Portrait
Coll. A. Glezer
(Left bottom) Painted by Vladimir Yankilevsky
Coll. A. Glezer
(Right) Oleg Tselkov
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