You are here: Russian Art and Culture » Art » REVIEW: Re-imagining Russia: The Landscape & Genre Paintings of Boris Chetkov by Matthew Burgess
REVIEW: Re-imagining Russia: The Landscape & Genre Paintings of Boris Chetkov by Matthew Burgess Posted in: Art, Russian art- Nov 28, 2013 Comments Off on REVIEW: Re-imagining Russia: The Landscape & Genre Paintings of Boris Chetkov by Matthew Burgess The first UK retrospective of abstract artist Boris Chetkov at the Westbury Hotel in Mayfair officially opened Russian Art Week on Friday, now in its third edition. Directed and organised by art historian Theodora Clarke, the week of Russian-focussed auctions and exhibitions has become an important part of the art calendar. The gala opening and Clarke’s curatorial debut saw auctioneers, gallerists, collectors and Russian Embassy staff all in attendance as a prelude to the UK-Russia Year of Culture starting in January.Re-imagining Russia: The Landscape and Genre Paintings of Boris Chetkov, organised in association with Pushkin Gallery, explores Chetkov’s connection to the 20th century rural way of life in Russia through his unique and somewhat overlooked, abstract style in Soviet Russia. Expressing himself through portraiture, landscapes, still life, genre scenes, and compositions was his nostalgic journey into mysticism and philosophy. Chetkov’s body of work comprises thousands of works in various mediums, created without boundaries or stylistic limitations, and often revisiting motifs and themes throughout his artistic career.
A timely celebration of his life’s work after the artist’s passing in 2010, Kenneth Pushkin, owner of the Pushkin Gallery and a close personal friend of Chetkov, is keen to find new platforms for his work: “Boris would have certainly been very pleased by the quality of the presentation. Aside from the act of creating the works, his greatest joy was to see people appreciating and discussing his creative offerings.” It is significant that the work of a contemporary artist should open Russian Art Week, traditionally focussed on the auction lots of the greats of Russian art. Chetkov’s work sits in the time of Russian art hugely underappreciated by both Russian and foreign critics and historians according to Clarke: “Chetkov’s paintings show how he both inherits and re-invents the traditions of Russian art. There is a great tradition in Russia of landscape painting and Nature has been a motif used by many Russian artists. The works I chose to include in this exhibiton showcase his unique contribution to twentieth century art in the Soviet Union. I’m delighted that the Pushkin Gallery has given me the opportunity to show his work on the hugely influential British art stage, especially during Russian Art Week.”
Boris Chetkov, Russian Men, 1972. Oil on Canvas (Image courtesy of Pushkin Gallery)
The exhibition primarily focusses on Chetkov’s landscape works, which in no way limits the scope of understanding him as an artist. His intricate and whimsical portrayal of the Russian countryside, its forests, rivers, religious architecture and inhabitants are curated by Clarke in such a way to show Chetkov’s dialogue between the spiritual and physical worlds. This idea of a ‘Russian duality’ in dialogue is something that Rosa Reed-Robinson of the Pushkin Gallery also commented upon when speaking of Chetkov’s ‘Russian Men’ (1972), a painting that portrays two Russian men in conversation, one of whom is distorted to the point of complete abstraction. In a deliberate move away from the established artistic education of Soviet Realism, Chetkov’s work can be seen as an emotional reaction to the political landscape of the time, as a political commentary on the USSR’s mass-industrialisation and move away from the traditional way of life. Chetkov’s own experiences of this shift see him pulled from his rural beginnings on the collective farms to imprisonment in the Gulag Archipelago at just nineteen years old. He continued to respond to political events through his artwork right up to the end of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, producing as Pushkin describes it, “an incredible stream of hundreds of large abstract action paintings”. In their rich spirituality and allusions to folk art and primitivism, Chetkov’s works touch on similar themes and draws stylistic comparisons with the earlier works of such Russian greats as Wassily Kandinsky and Natalia Goncharova.
Despite the hardship and humiliations experienced by Chetkov during the most oppressive years of the Soviet regime, it is clear from his artwork that he maintained a childlike, positive attitude. Each painting appears as a resolved and fully realised emotion and spontaneous outpouring of colourful expression. Speaking about his artistic process, Pushkin says of Chetkov that he “never fretted over the completion of a piece, when it was done, it was done, and that is the principle of art”.
Theodora Clarke’s book ‘Re-imagining Russia: Boris Chetkov Landscape & Genre Painting’ accompanies the exhibition and contains a detailed academic essay and previously unseen works by the artist. The book examines the essence of Chetkov’s artistic practice, not only in body and scope, but also contextualises him in terms of his immediate and more distant contemporaries. The book accurately states the intentionality of his work in relation to contemporary artists and sets a starting point for future art historians to consider Chetkov’s oeuvre and evolution of style. “There are countless avenues to explore with Chetkov”, notes Pushkin. “One could easily focus on his still life paintings or his portraits or compositions and so on.” Chetkov is certainly a Russian artist worthy of dialogue and this retrospective and accompanying critical analysis by Clarke are an excellent first foray into answering Chetkov’s favourite question, “What is art?”.
Russian Art Week runs from 22nd – 29th November 2013 Theodora Clarke’s book ‘Re-imagining Russia: Boris Chetkov Landscape & Genre Painting’ is available to purchase at: http://www.russianartweek.co.uk/vip-events/ By Matthew Burgess