Oleg Prokofiev: White Paintings 1966-1978

Oleg Prokofiev White Works 1966-1978

Oleg Prokofiev Prokofiev’s paintings continued to pale into white abstracts and geometric forms that sought to distil the essence of his experience. Paintings of white-on-white, opalescent prisms of softly diffusing light. Hazy milky moonscapes emerged under semi-skimmed skies, as though seen through half-closed eyes.

One reviewer remarked that from the door of one exhibition the canvases seemed blank, non-existent- but twenty paces into the room and he found himself violently pulled into an intensely alive world, shimmering with reminisces of things or places halfforgotten.

Surrounded by the unfamiliar Yorkshire landscape and far away from Soviet Russia, Prokofiev knew he must embrace a new direction or, as he put it, ‘fade’. Eventually, shadowy figures began to emerge, transparent, floating, bringing a pleasing linear quality about that had been absent in his previous works. These moonbathers float like an underwater Matisse ballet, airy, dreamy translucent. Meditations on the relationships between figures, these ethereal compositions take on the sheen of faint lens flare, angelic faceless forms of see-through people. They invent new shapes in their overlapping outlines, curled up in icy caves, resting on weightless glaciers made of virgin wool and glass blossoms.

Prokofiev found himself drawn to the idea of these shadows stretching and joining, pooling into new stranger transparencies.

Russian Landscape Oil on canvas, 53 x 72 cm 1966

Vilnius Oil on canvas , 81 x 64 cm 1966

Russian Landscape In Green And Lilac Oil on canvas, 59 x 69 cm 1966

Empty Street, Russian Village Oil on canvas, 60 x 45 cm 1968

Arch By Moonlight Oil on canvas, 79 x 59 cm 1969

K (Escape) Oil on canvas, 78 x 67 cm 1969

Lilac Arch Oil on canvas, 75 x 76 cm 1971

Cut Arch Oil on canvas, 76 x 63 cm 1971-72

Dissolving Arch Oil on canvas, 51 x 101 cm 1971-73

Moving Square Oil on canvas, 102 x 61 cm 1973

White Landscape ll Oil on canvas, 79 x 59 cm 1973

Covered Oil on canvas 74 x 79 cm 1973

Arches Of The Heart Oil on canvas, 73 x 92 cm 1973

Metamorphic Archway Oil on canvas, 93 x 74 cm 1973-74

Moon Cut In Two Oil on canvas, 63 x 81 cm 1974

Metamorphosis lll Oil on canvas, 71 x 102 cm 1974

Music Transformed Oil on canvas 92 x 101 cm 1974

Grey Dancers Oil on canvas 129 x 179 cm 1975

Circle Oil on canvas 106 x 104 cm 1975

Frenzy Oil on canvas, 69 x 97 cm 1975

Blue Dance Oil on canvas, 51 x 76 cm 1975

Rhythm Of Figures Oil on canvas, 76 x 143 cm 1976

Red Ancestor Oil on canvas, 115 x 163 cm 1976

The Choice Oil an canvas, 46 x 62 cm 1977

Towers 4 Oil on canvas, 92 x 73 cm 1978

Towers 3 Oil on canvas, 92 x 73 cm 1978

NY (C10) Oil on canvas, 92 x 73 cm 1978

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