"He walked along the path of the Russian icon"

Memory of the artist Gleb Bogomolov

In St. Petersburg, at the 84th year of his life, the non-conformist artist Gleb Bogomolov died. Without the figure of Gleb Bogomolov, it is difficult to imagine the landscape of the Leningrad art underground of the 60-80s.

He was born in 1933 in the sailor’s family, his education received a very colorful one: he managed to visit a geologist, engineer, learn from two technical universities and at the theater institute on Akimov’s course, finally graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Food Industry, but, instead of working in a profession, he took up painting. Gleb Bogomolov is a self -taught, he did not learn to primer the canvases and draw gypsum heads either at the Academy of Arts or in any of the artistic schools of Leningrad. Perhaps that is why his art from the very beginning acquired an unofficial character. Bogomolov’s fame originated in the 70s: he became one of the central figures at the first exhibitions of Leningrad-non-conformists in the Gaza Palace of Culture in 1974 and in the Nevsky recreation center in 1975, joined the TEII-a partnership of experimental art, where they also listened to his voice.

The "BASNESEN" exhibitions brought fame to their participants, after them Gleb Bogomolov began to be perceived as one of the most noticeable unofficial artists of Leningrad. He participated in several apartment exhibitions, and then his paintings along with the works of Ernst Unknown, Mikhail Shemyakin, Evgenia Mikhnov-Vovyutenko, Oleg Tselkov and other artists went to the cities of Europe, it was an exhibition "Museum of Russian Art in Exile", organized by Alexander Glezer. She complicated the life of many of the participants, but Bogomolov’s star was so happy that Soviet functionaries not only did not remember his “sins”, but, on the contrary, even included his work in the “Olympic” exhibition of young artists, specially organized in the summer of 1980 for foreign guests of the Olympics as a showcase of “free” Soviet art.

Nevertheless, the fame of Gleb Bogomolov was preceded by a rather long search for her own manner. According to his own admission, among others, the Moscow artist Oleg Tsilkov influenced him. About the traces of this influence in the artist’s work, the art critic, the author of the biographical dictionary “The artists of the Leningrad underground” Lyubov Gurevich: “This can be felt in his“ heads ”of the late 1970s, in the series“ Roman types ”. Its continuation under the name“ Slaves and Heroes of Ancient Rome ”was exhibited in their magnificent-tup. They saw a parody of the Board of Honor.

Lyubov Gurevich describes in detail the manner of Bogomolov, who worked not only with paints, but experimented a lot, including “torn, yellowed, with burned edges, the art critic notes that, thanks to such inclusions, the artist’s works acquired a pompous and slanted appearance. The effect is achieved by the combination of a sophisticated, sophisticated, sophisticated. The discreet beauty of the decayed, worn, worn, which was eliminated with the abundant use of gold foil, pure white, scarlet, blue flowers.

Lyubov Gurevich knew Gleb Bogomolova personally, although she communicated with him infrequently. She got the impression that as an organizer of exhibitions, as a member of the exhibition of TEII Bogomolov was very authoritarian:

"He took the work and spoke in such a peremptory tone that no one was already daring to object. It happened that he had taken work and said:" This place smells of a moodroho "(the Leningrad branch of the Union of Artists) - it was like sending an artist in three letters. He believed that the painting should be bright, aggressive, and he himself was in his works, and in his works corded in his works. Rough power ".

By the way, it is worth noting that the neglect of the Union of Artists as a symbol of official art did not prevent Gleb Bogomolov later become a member of the Union of Artists of St. Petersburg. Lyubov Gurevich recalls that the Leningrad underground artists, unlike Moscow, were poor, but Bogomolov managed to behave like an esthete - he was one of all in jeans, albeit shabby, which was then extremely prestigious. Lyubov Gurevich sees the craving for fashion in the work of Bogomolov.

"Many of his work resemble icons, there is a lot of red, white, a lot of gold. These are bright, spectacular works that fit perfectly into the rich interior."

In connection with the addiction to the aesthetics of icons, it is interesting to recall the long -circulating rumors: supposedly Gleb Bogomolov is the father of journalist Alexander Nevzorov, known to his militant atheism. According to Lyubov Gurevich, there is a legend that Nevzorov once approached Bogomolov, but did not find his fatherly feelings and has since hated an avant-garde painting. The legend is elegant, although perhaps not quite reliable - for example, the artist Anatoly Zaslavsky heard completely different: that both the "father" and the "son" of his kinship were never denied. However, this is not directly related to art, except for the very growing legends around the creator’s head by a sign of his involvement in the higher worlds.

Gleb Bogomolova, art critic Erast Kuznetsov, is considered a very great artist.

“He had his own topic, he turned to her very consistently, not repeating, but developing her step by step. At one time he developed very slowly, many overtaken him with the courage or even the arrogance of his searches and achievements. And he calmly went forward, worked, gained strength and as a result became a large artist, very much affecting the viewer, calm and smart, as it should be an artist. So he once and he was looking for himself for a long time-and he has developed a certain image of our past, and he embodied this past, which always remains with us, the spiritual past, many are trying to realize it, but only certain intelligence, head structures, and it was a very organic one. He used individual nuances, subtleties, creating his own world, which can always be recognized by the best of his works where this is a bright spiritual beginning, he knew him well, he was a very lively, interesting person, not at all perfect, sometimes very stubborn, as well as most artists, but always bright.

Indeed, the paintings of Gleb Bogomolov with a pastel, whimsical surface created by imposing many layers, remembering the paintings of antiquity and revival, have always been successful. During the life of the Bogomolov, he became a participant in about 250 exhibitions, his paintings are in many museums of the world, including the Russian Museum and the Tretyakov Gallery, the Museum of Modern Russian Art in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in Moscow, the Assembly of the Diaghilev Center.