Alexander Konovalov. Return. Silver Age Watercolors

At a personal exhibition of Alexandra Konovalova in the halls of the MVK PAX Art Gallery of Zurab Tsereteli, viewers will be presented not only the paintings of Alexandra Konovalova from the collection of the Vellum Gallery. At the opening day, the premiere screening of the film “Coast of the Best Worlds” will take place. The film is a story telling about the work and fate of the artist Alexandra Konovalova, in which the authors were able to very sincerely convey the lyricism and refinement of the creative nature of the heroine, and at the same time present an absolutely documentary life story of a particular person and his works.

We are well aware of many names from the era of decadence, marked in the flowering of symbolism in Russian art. Mikhail Vrubel and Alexander Benois, Vyacheslav Ivanov and Anna Akhmatova, Vaclav Nizhinsky and Ida Rubinstein. At the same time, there were amazing artists who did not participate in the boisterous exhibition activity, were not members of associations and groups, but were no less interesting, creating works of no less artistic power than eminent masters. One of these creators is Alexandra Sergeevna Konovalova.

She was born in Moscow in 1889. Under the influence of poetic moods and suffragist aspirations for independence, a fourteen-year-old young lady in 1903 she entered the Stroganov School. In 1906, the school was temporarily closed, and she and her friends left for Paris, where she stayed for about a year, visiting the Colarossi studio, honing her eyes in the Louvre halls and drawing inspiration from a cafe on the hills of Montmartre.

Lyubov Agafonova (art critic, director of the Vellum Gallery) wrote about the origins of the artist’s work: “First of all, Mikhail Vrubel, of course, had a great influence on Konovalova’s work… Myth-making, a cult of the amazing, balancing on the brink of reality and sleep.”

Vrubel is not the only genius who left an echo in the schedule of Konovalova. The artist was fascinated by the estate dreams of Borisov-Musatov. Bored ladies in crinolines are the favorite heroines of many young creators of the era. Poets and artists enthusiastically used a narrative, literary motive in their works, drawing inspiration from an epic or gospel story. Konovalova’s watercolors are entirely the product and face of Russian symbolism.

The exhibition will feature artworks by Konovalova mainly from the turn of the 1900-1910s. Lyubov Agafonova writes: “Long, like rain strings, watercolor strokes (“ After explanation ”,“ Ruslan and Lyudmila ”) are replaced by their pearl transparency (“ Gold of the Rhine ”,“ Captive of the Snake ”). By the end of the tenth years, Konovalova’s commitment to novelty led to poster frankness of colorful compositions, to a generalization of figures (“Canvas Whitening”). ”

Rounding out the retrospective of watercolors that Alexandra Sergeevna created while living in Chukotka in the 1930s. Here the artist continues the myth-making, searching for the fabulous, so beloved at the beginning of the century. Representing the dance of shamans (“Ritual dance”), she is fascinated not only by the colors of the Chukchi land, but also by people living in a surreal, mysterious world. The lands where the stone and the sled dog are endowed with mystical power and influence the fate of today and the flow of life of the Universe equally. This living dream world is consonant with the attitude of Alexandra Konovalova and is loved and loved by her so much.

Unfortunately, those little bits of information that they managed to collect cannot tell in detail about Alexander Konovalova, an amazing artist in the first third of the twentieth century, the circumstances of her life and death. We only had her watercolors - wonderful works of art worthy of taking a place in the history of culture.