Valery Volkov "Pantomime of color" Automatic translate

The ARTSTORY gallery opens the summer season with Valery Volkov’s exhibition “Pantomime of Color”, which will be held from June 14 to July 29, 2018 and dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the famous artist. A retrospective project will include painting and graphics starting in the 1950s. and to this day. The rhythm of color and light spots, music, images related to the nature and culture of the East, portrait and self-portrait, oriental silence and contemplation are the main themes and motifs of the works of Valery Volkov. Many works are based on the principles of the direction that the artist himself defines as “Realisme Non-Figuratif” (“non-figurative realism”). It is interesting that behind each picture there is a certain story and real impressions.

Valery Alexandrovich Volkov - a member of the Volkov artistic dynasty, whose origins were the great master Alexander Nikolaevich Volkov, author of the famous "Pomegranate teahouse." Through the art of his father, Valery Volkov discovered both the achievements of the avant-garde and the classics, and the gift of special receptivity and his own vision allowed the artist to develop them in his work. Not without the influence of the “Pomegranate Tea House” was born the formula of Valery Volkov: “Plastic is spiritual.” Throughout his life, Volkov is guided, as one of the peaks in art, to this great work. Following his father, who headed the so-called “Volkov brigade” in the 1930s, Valery Alexandrovich, as the eldest son, stood at the head of the “second Volkov brigade” - a unique phenomenon for the 1960-70s. This second Tashkent “brigade” included his younger brother, painter and sculptor Alexander Volkov, painter Yevgeny Kravchenko and sculptor Damir Ruzybaev. Many interests of Valery Volkov became common for the group, especially with regard to the passion for the art of the “Russian Parisian” Nicolas de Stael, the main ones of which were color and light.

The first visual impressions of the childhood of Valery Volkov were the work of his father and the landscapes of the Ferghana Valley. The origins of V. Volkov’s painting are in his childhood in Asia. The artist truly loves the land on which he was born - in Fergana in 1928 - and even after moving to Moscow in 1966, he continues to return there for a long time and does not stop working on Central Asian motifs. The artist conducts a conversation with his father throughout his career, comparing his own art. The main thing for him is not the object itself, but the transfer of feelings that it evokes. He projects the world around him on canvas using color as a formative principle. Color in canvases becomes almost the only basis of the image, and color spots create movement and a special rhythm. We can say that in Volkov’s method the objective world becomes an occasion for a color spot. This is the face of the Gypsy woman, flaming with ocher in the blue twilight (2011), and the still-life with the dog Pif, filled with dynamics (1975).

Valery Volkov studied at the Tashkent Art Studio under the Union of Artists for some time with Mikhail Fedorovich Shemyakin (student and follower Valentin Serov and Konstantin Korovin, an excellent portrait painter). Volkov turns to portraits throughout his career, believing that "the greatest works of painting are connected with man." And through self-portraits, the artist seems to reveal the whole palette of the drama of human existence. The format, composition, the best features of the Russian realistic portrait, the style of modernism and, in particular, expressionism, the general mood of the Silver Age portraits are inherent in some of Volkov’s works, and primarily they appeared in the portraits of the artist’s wife - Svetlana Zavadovskaya (Russian Frenchwoman, daughter of a famous orientalist Yuri Zavadovsky). A considerable influence on the artist is rendered by a meeting with Marc Chagall and friendship with Andre Lansky, another prominent representative of the "Paris school", whom Nicolas de Stael called his teacher. Valery Volkov met him during his first trip with his wife to Paris in 1966.

Volkov’s painting is either figurative, semi-abstract, or abstract. The traditions of the Russian avant-garde, the culture of the West and, most importantly, the East invade the master’s colorful palette with bright decorativeness that set the emotional tone of his painting. Never breaking ties with figurative art, the artist turns to abstraction in the early 1960s. He himself explains this appeal with a paradoxical desire to "see reality more widely." Nevertheless, the main themes in the work are eternal themes from the folk life of the East: images of vagabond actors, clowns, tightrope walkers…

Throughout his life, Valery Volkov, together with his younger brother - Alexander Alexandrovich Volkov and his nephew - artist Andrei Volkov - continue the work of perpetuating the memory of the great master - Alexander Nikolayevich Volkov. These are exhibitions, and publications of books, catalogs, collections of verses by Alexander Nikolaevich with scientific commentaries and memoirs.

Valery Alexandrovich Volkov - painter, art critic, art theorist. Member of the Union of Artists of the USSR. Born in 1928 in Ferghana, Uzbekistan. He studied at the Tashkent Art College and at the University of Tashkent at the art history department. C 1949 - A regular participant in domestic and international exhibitions. Until 1966, he lived and worked in Tashkent, then moved to Moscow. Since 1966 - creative trips to France, Italy, England, Turkey, Egypt, USA. In 1970-1980 - Lecturer in painting and composition at the Moscow Art College (MOHU) in memory of 1905. From 1993 to 1998 - Artistic Director of the Faculty of Painting, Institute of Artistic Creativity. The works of V. A. Volkov are in the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Museum of Fine Arts, and the Museum of Art. I.V. Savitsky, Tashkent Museum of Art, museums in Arkhangelsk, Zaporozhye, Novokuznetsk, Ferghana, Samarkand, the New Jerusalem Museum, the Gregory Gallery, in private collections in Russia, France, Italy, England, Egypt, Canada, USA, Australia, at the Zimmerli Museum of Art.

ARTSTORY Gallery: Moscow, Staropimenovsky per., D. 14 (metro Tverskaya, Mayakovskaya). Every day, except Mondays, from 12.00 to 20.00. Free admission.