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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