You and Shevchenko do not take an example!

In the State Exhibition Hall "Ark" - an exhibition of the famous artist Alexander Shevchenko "New Year and other holidays".

There are more holidays than days a year. There is no time or health to mark them all. Moreover, one artist cannot respond to each of these holidays. And, of course, the artist Alexander Shevchenko did not set such a task for himself. However, in his work, the “near -holiday” topic is visible, since he, in principle, is inclined to notice rather bright sides in life. Therefore, in one of the oldest Moscow galleries, the Ark decided that the calendar mesh of the holidays could well be used as a structure for the personal exhibition of Alexander Shevchenko.

His works are almost always plot, but not loaded with “literature”. They must have a place for feeling and reflection. Moreover, art is exactly what modern, tradition manifests itself here on a new round. And let anyone deceive analogy with the past: such painting, with all its nuances and concepts, could not be either in the 1920s or in the 1970s. It turns out that in order to become an “artist of the 21st century”, computer technologies are not so mandatory. Enough artistic skill, along with intuition, internal mood and the ability to “static dramaturgy”.

The exhibition will end on January 29. The Gallery "Ark" is located on Nemchinov Street, the house is 12. It works from 11:00 to 20:00.

Caviar and cognac, diptych

Riga sprats, 2016

Roman, 2005

A Christmas tree was born in the forest, 2016

Christmas tree on Tverskaya, 2013

Christmas tree. Historical Museum, 2013

Konstantin Sutyan about Alexander Shevchenko

- What is this picture about? -Uh ... well ...

A very important quality of painting is intelligibility when you can say exactly what the picture is about. “About Paris”, “About the skating rink”, “About the New Year” - everything is clear at once, at first sight. And then it turns out that the picture is actually not about the skating rink, but about something else ... - About the incomprehensible, which is actually art.

Intelligence: "Here you are, fools, leave me alone!" - Very important quality of real painting.

Mosselprom, 2015

On the veranda, 2013

New Year, 2005

Shuttles at VDNH, 2014

Pure ponds, 2013

Alexander Shevchenko is the father of the Lukovskaya toy , which is also presented at the exhibition (photo of Natalia and Alexander Rusov)

Alexander Shevchenko about himself

Once at the school, the director, breaking the boys of our class for some impudent prank, shouted in his hearts:

- You and Shevchenko do not take an example, he will be an artist, and you all are a direct road to the wipers!

Despite the fact that the people surrounding me were confident in my fate, for a long time I could not fully feel like an artist, and from afar, in circles approached this. He was half an artist: he worked as a butafor and painted pictures for himself; Knoterevik and cut engravings; The photographer was both a restorer, and wrote something, wore at the youth exhibitions. I think when I went to the wipers, I finally got into the thought that now I am a real artist.

Then I sometimes saw ready -made paintings - beautiful in color and composition, it was only worth closing my eyes. But he was afraid to transfer them to the canvas, seriously fearing a possible accusation of plagiarism, thinking that these works were already drawn by someone, and I see them, accidentally connecting to a certain information field ...

Now, of course, I don’t think so, I don’t see those pictures anymore, and I rarely go to nature. Moscow, Parisian or Breton works I write in a workshop on drawings made, also, as a rule, from memory.

Speaking about the creative process, I express myself indefinitely, often using the word "for some reason." Indeed, successful things are often obtained as if by themselves, in addition to will and desire. Verily, promising sketches often turn out to be a misunderstanding, and the failure kalyaks-little ones in unexpectedly become works that you are quietly proud of for a long time, without showing at exhibitions of fear that they will offer a “good price”.

Once, standing on a deserted street, he wrote factory walls behind a long freshly colored fence. The work did not go well. Desperate to stretch the sketch, cleaned with masticin everything that he did, and found that if we take the remains of a blue fence on canvas for water, a decent sea landscape could go out. He removed the remnants of factory pipes, quickly converted to the port, made an embankment from the sidewalk and lifted men on it. When almost everything was ready, the working shift ended, and the workers densely fell from the passing in the “sea” fence ... He quickly folded the sketchbook, and he finished the boat on the horizon already in the workshop ...

My first works are a series of relatively successfully executed impressionistic studies. Studies soon replaced larger canvases, greatly simplified in shape. Similar "throwing" from pure painting to rigid formalism subsequently became ordinary.

It is difficult to say how this happens and what is the reason. Here you can recall one artist, a strong realist, who fell on his head. From a strong blow in his brains, the usual scheme was broken, the wires somehow closed it differently, and when he, having recovered, returned to his craft, he unexpectedly found himself for himself, which became a formalist.

I have this metamorphosis, thank God, is not connected with trauma and occurs regularly - quietly and painlessly. Something clicks in my head imperceptibly, and I begin to work in a completely different stylistic direction. Attempts to do something in the previous manner are unsuccessful until the “contacts” again stand up in the same place. Both lines, in no way intersecting, existed independently, replacing each other from time to time, but the work of the last few years-for example, such as the “flaner”-stylistically merge into a third, in their own way of an integral direction.

Flaner, 2015

The least I would like to look like a medium from art. It would be nice, of course, to know, or at least amuse myself with the hope that I will deepen something, strengthen something, strengthen something. I reveal my Russian soul and thereby save the world. But no - only spots, lines, verticals and horizontal, color and tone are most occupied in work. The coloristic and airborne solution of the plane of the canvas is the main task for me. Thus I live.

In the end, even the most beautiful picture is not Chizhevsky’s chandelier and does not radiate anything in itself. Like dumbbells lying in the corner, they do not bring their owner visible benefits without effort on his part.

The action of poor painting is obvious - it spoils the taste.